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.