PAGE 4, THE BEHREND BEACON, JANUARY 14, 2000 NATIONAL CAMPUS NEWS Some ropes removed from Texas A&M bonfire hours before collapse by Victoria Loe Hicks Knight-Ridder Newspapers January 11, 2000 DALLAS Four of the eight ropes that stabilized the center pole of the Aggie bonfire were removed hours before the 60-foot log stack collapsed last November, killing 12 people, ac cording to an engineering report re leased Monday. The report by Rogers Engineering Services of College Station, Texas, does not suggest that cutting the ropes caused the bonfire to fall. But an en gineering professor at Southern Meth odist University said severing the ropes would have made the pole more vulnerable to snapping under the many stresses applied to it. "That might be significant. That probably is getting at the source" of the Nov. 18 tragedy, said Dr. Hal Watson, a specialist in accident recon- struction Leo E. Linheck Jr., the Houston construction executive who is over seeing the investigation into the col lapse, said he is aware of the report but has not read it. He said it has been forwarded to one of the consulting firms hired to analyze data on the ac cident. "I'm sure it will he quite interest ing to the forensic engineers," he said, adding, however, that it is too early to know which pieces of information ultimately will hold the key to the mystery. Rogers Engineering was called in by A&M officials hours after the col lapse to help dismantle the log pile and free victims and survivors. The firm's president, Alton G. Rogers. submitted a report on Dec. 10 describ ing that grisly process and noting sev eral possible structural anomalies la•ft , you SAN FAT based on hi, observations, conversa tions with others and analysis of pho tos taken before and after the acci- "RFS (Rogers Engineering) was intOrmed that eight guy ropes origi nally stabiliied the center pule Rogers w rote. ..The four lower guy ropes were cut free from the cell- ter pole approxi mately two to three hours prior to the collapse." Rogers did not reveal who told him the ropes had been removed or why, and he wrote that he had not in dependently veri fied the informa- Monday, Rogers Engineering re ferred questions to the university. which has desig nated Linheck to answer all queries about the accident and investigation. The center pole snapped in three places, although it is not vet clear whether the breaks occurred before or during the collapse. By Rogers' mea surements, the breaks occurred a few inches below ground level and at roughly the tops of the first and fourth (the highest) tiers. Watson, the SMU engineering pro fessor, said one thing is certain: the WING-• NITE AdPi•t 7vmAyeseilpti pole was not able to withstand the forces acting on it. And having guy ropes attached near the bottom or in the middle as well as at the top would have made it better able to do "If there is an imbalance of load from the side, that puts the pole in bending stress. Wires at the bottom reduce that bending, - he said. Thus, to remove the lower ropes would have "put that center pole into a lot more bending stress, - he said. ~ 190 At any given time. the center pole was likely to have a number of differ ent loads applied to it. Some students worked on swings suspended from it. And logs were lifted onto the top tiers pulley-style by trucks pulling on "tag lines" that ran through fasteners near the top of the pole. The removal of the guy ropes was only one item Rogers catalogued. Among the others were that: Although the center pole was plumb, the first tier of logs, which Dartmouth report recommends continuation of Greek organizations TMS Campus January 12, 2000 DARTMOUTH, N.H. (TMS) A new report from Dartmouth College officials recommends that the campus's single-sex fra ternities and sororities he al lowed to continue, despite a plan devised by the institution's hoard of trustees to make student life "substantially coeducational." Students have been waiting for the recently released report since last February, when announce ments about gender integration sparked a series of protests on the campus, which is more closely linked to Greek organizations than any other Ivy League school. Roughly half of the college's sophomores, juniors and seniors belong to single-sex fraternities or sororities, and surveys have indicated that a strong majority of undergraduates support the groups' continuation. Despite support for the stu dents, the report submitted by Supreme Court hears rape case involving Virginia Tech student TMS Campus January 11, 2000 SPRINGFIELD, Va. (TMS) In a case that could change the legal boundaries between state and federal government, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday on whether a former Virginia Tech student should he allowed to sue in federal court two men who allegedly raped her. The justices will decide whether Congress acted outside its authority when it approved the Violence Against Women Act in 1994, the fed eral law under which Christy Brzonkala is suing for damages. Brzonkala's lawyers claim the law is needed because state justice sys tems fail to adequately protect women from rape, sexual assault and domes tic violence. The law's supporters in Rogers estimated to weigh 870,000 lbs., appeared to lean slightly in the direction that the stack eventually fell. Photos taken over several days sug gest that the lean became more pro nounced in the final days, he wrote. The driller who sank the 14-foot hole for the center pole hit a previous year's pole, causing the augur to "kick to the side four to five inches out of plumb." To straighten it, the driller was in structed to make the hole several inches wider, with the under standing that the space around the pole would be filled in once the pole was in place. Watson said he doubted that the width of the hole was a fac tor in the collapse. If the soil packed around the center pole had given way, he said, he would not have ex pected the pole to snap as it did. But he said any imbalance in the stacked logs could be significant, because it would have created stress on the center pole although it's not clear how much "If the first tier was leaning, one side would have been pushing against the center pole more," he said. In the photos, Rogers wrote, the first stack appeared to be perpendicu lar to the ground, which slopes to the southeast. The slope is such that the administrators, faculty and stu dents on the committee does state that an overhaul of Dartmouth's Greek life is "abso- lutely necessary." The report notes that the Greek organizations have less racial di versity than the campus as a whole and that many houses are in desperate need of repair, in cluding some that have "fetid ... basements in which the stench of bodily fluids was pervasive." The report also states that insen sitive behavior such as the "ghetto party" thrown by one fraternity in 1998 are too com mon. It also criticizes the orga nizations' focus on drinking games, which encourage exces sive alcohol consumption. "If it is to survive, the system must change significantly," the report states. The committee recommended that Dartmouth allow only se niors and four juniors to live in each fraternity house. It also suggested that the college delay rush until the winter quarter, al clude the Clinton administration and most state attorneys general, who con tend that victimization costs the U.S. economy billions of dollars each year. They contend that victims should be allowed to sue their attackers for mon- etary damages. But opponents counter that the fed eral government should not have un limited power to regulate state mat ters such as crime. According to court records filed by attorneys represent ing the two former Virginia Tech ath letes accused of raping Brzonkala, the law "displaces state prerogative in ar eas of traditional state authority." Al lowing Congress to regulate matters of non-economic conduct would "au thorize Congress to regulate . virtually anything," the also claimed. The attorneys are backed by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which ground under the northwestern edge of the stack would have been about nine inches higher than at the south eastern edge, he calculated. When the stack collapsed, the engineer wrote, it "fell to the east southeast." It appeared to have fallen "in a man ner similar to a stack of playing cards," Rogers wrote. Among the logs on the first tier, he observed, those on the west side appeared to have rotated around their bases "at an angle of ap proximately 20 degrees from verti cal." Rogers said that, as far as he could see. "the pole did not fail in the ground prior to the collapse. It did not ap pear that the pole had rotated." That initially surprised him, he wrote, although he realized upon reflection that "if the bonfire initially failed be tween the first and second stacks, a mass shifting of the first stack could possibly shear the center pole at the ground." Linbeck said such observations are "tantalizing." But he said the investi gative panel is "trying hard not to en gage in speculation." "There is an enormous amount of information to digest," he said. "I un derstand the impatience. I'm impa tient, too. But we're trying to get the whole story written, and then analyze A&M President Ray Bowen, who appointed Linbeck, has charged the commission to report its findings by the end of March. However, some of the consultants hired by the panel al ready have said their work will take longer than that. A&M has budgeted $250,000 for the probe, although some of those in volved have suggested that the final tab will be at least twice that amount. lowing students to settle in to campus life without the pressure "If it is to survive, the system must change signifi- cantly." -Dartmouth College report of having to join a Greek organi- zation The report also states that all tap systems used to dispense beer from kegs should be removed. Committee members also recom mended that the board of trustees review the issue in five years to determine whether Greek groups have made enough progress to de serve to be allowed to continue. Trustees are reviewing the committee's recommendations and are expected to take action in the spring. threw out Brzonkala's lawsuit against the athletes, saying that Congress' power to regulate interstate commerce and assure citizens equal protection did not also authorize it to enact a por tion of the act that allowed victims to sue their attackers. The Supreme Court, which has in recent years increasingly handed more power to the states, is expected to render a decision in July. Brzonkala became the first person to sue under the federal law in 1995 when she filed suit against Antonio Morrison and James Crawford. She alleged the two then-football players raped her in her dormitory room. Brzonkala did not report the alleged attack for several months, and the men were never charged with a crime.
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