4 Page 2 - The Michigan Daily - Thursday, December 1, 1983 Student dies in hazing -- incident NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP)-A 20- year-old engineering student was found dead of an alcohol overdose yesterday morning after an off-campus fraternity "hazing party," police said. The fraternity pledge's death was not discovered until members of Omega Psi Phi social fraternity arose and could not wake the victim. "HE WENT TO bed on the floor after the party. They all crashed somewhere between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. and then this morning they just couldn't wake him up," said Homicide Capt. Sherman Nickens.. Police identified the victim as Vann Watts of Birmingham, Ala., a junior mechanical engineering student at Tennessee State University. "The body was bruised. During this hazing party, they used switches on the guy to show manliness or whatever," Nickens said. DR. CHARLES HARLAN, Davidson County medical examiner, ruled Watts died from an overdose of alcohol. The student's blood-alcohol level was .52 percent, more than five times the level necessary to be considered legally in- toxicated when driving, he said. APnPoto Three Tennessee State University students leave a fraternity hazing party held Tuesday night. One other student was found dead of alcohol overdose yesterday morning. After the body was reported to police about 8:30 a.m., eight other initiates with shaved heads emerged from the house, squinting at the light, witnesses said. Two of the pledges supported a third under the arms so he could walk. David Saunders, a fraternity adviser and assistant director of finance and accounting at Tennessee State, said hazing is not allowed by fraternities. He said the drinking began after the pledges were inducted into the frater- nity as brothers. "After the ritual was read to them, they all started drinking," Saunders said. "They then went to the campus to do their steps-another ritual-and picked up some girls. They returned to the house and started partying all over again." ]Fridays FROM ANN ARBOR EXPRESS TO METRO AIRPORT & DETROIT Reagan expresses confidence in Gemayel LEAVING MICHIGAN UNION LEAVING YPSILANTI 11:00am 2:00pm 4:30pm 11:25am 2:25pm 4:55pm WASHINGTON (AP)-The Reagan administration offered a vote of con- fidence yesterday in Lebanese President Amin Gemayel on the eve of his talks with President Reagan, but had no new plan for promoting the withdrawal of Syrian troops from his country. As new violence erupted in Beirut, where the airport was closed and the U.S. Marine base came under shellfire for a third day, U.S. officials spoke hopefully of reviving negotiations bet- ween Lebanon and Syria, with the United States aggin willing to play a leading role. THE OFFICIALS saw Gemayel's hand strengthened by his efforts to reconcile warring Leganese factions, and suggested a weakening of Syria's grip over half the country partly because of President Hafez Assad's failure to gain full control of the Palestine Liberation Organization. These developments generated a measure of optimism in advance of Gemayel's meeting today with Reagan that Syria might be ready to work out a deal for withdrawal of its 40,000 troops in Lebanon. In that event, the United States is believed ready to commit an American negotiator and its prestige to the process. Beyond that, officials acknowledged privately that they had no new initiatives to offer Gemayel during his three-day visit. They also rejected any suggestion that the May troop with- drawal agreement between Lebanon and Israel might be watered down to accommodate Syria. TCKETS AVAILABLE AT THE MICHIGAN UNION 763-2071 $6.00 IN BRIEF Compiled from Associated Press and United Press International reports Beirut shelling closes airport BEIRUT, Lebanon - Shellfire closed Beirut airport yesterday, and Druse gunners threatened fierce attacks on Lebanese army positions at the ter- minal, harbor, power stations, schools and peacekeeping bases. No casualties were reported at the airport, where the U.S. Marine base came under shelling for a third day, but Druse attacks on army positions in Christian east Beirut Tuesday killed six civilians and wounded 30. In a written statement, the Progressive Socialist Party of Druse leader Walid Jumblatt accused the Lebanese army and Christian militias in Beirut of shelling Druse mountain villages. Elsewhere, Beirut radio said Druse gunners pounded the Lebanese army garrison at Souk el-Gharb in the mountains above the Marine positions. Beirut radio also reported fresh clashes in Tripoli ,between Palestinian supporters and Syrian-backed opponents of Yasser Arafat's leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Shuttle furnaces yield new alloys SPACE CENTER, Houston - Astronauts turned Spacelab 1 into an or- biting factory yesterday, firing up three powerful furnaces to melt and mix metal samples and create exotic alloys impossible to manufacture on Earth. And in a test to see how humans adapt to weightlessness, mission specialist Robert Parker endured the torture of having warm air blown into his ears while a television camera took pictures of his eyes. The furnaces, generating heat of up to 3,800 degrees Fahrenheit, melted bits of silver, aluminum, zinc and germanium, causing the elements to mix in different combinations and become alloys. Payload specialist Ulf Merbold of West Germany reported the work was "looking very good," although a failure in a vacuum system halted one ex- periment for a time. Experts hope the experiments will lead to development of space factories where molten metals could be mixed to create alloys with unique properties. Many such alloys are impossible to make on Earth because gravity causes the molten metals to separate. Economists see good year ahead WASHINGTON - The government reported yesterday that its main economic forecasting gauge rose 0.8 percent in October, the 14th consecutive monthly gain. Commerce Secretary Malcolm Baldridge said the 14-month string of gains in his department's Index of Leading Economic Indicators has been ex- ceeded since World War II only by an unbroken 17 months of advances following the 1973-75 recession. "With the long upswing...still in progress we can expect the current economic expansion to continue," Baldridge said in a statement. White House spokesman Larry Speakes said, "The recovery is on track and the leading indicators show substantial economic improvement is still ahead. Full steam ahead." Several private economists agreed, although Robert Gough of Data Resources Inc. saw some "risks that lurk in 1984" - notably the large federal budget deficit, continued weakness in some corporate balance sheets and the possibility of an increase in inflation. Trailways bus crash kills six LIVINGSTON, Texas - A Trailways bus an investigator said may have been speeding rammed the rear of a flatbed truck and catapulted off a bridge and into a creek bank early yesterday, killing six people and injuring six others. Witnesses said the badly injured driver, who had been at the wlielless than an hour, believed the bus blew a tire, but a passenger said he thought the driver might have fallen asleep. The Department of Public Safety said 12 people were aboard, and all were killed or injured. Three of the dead were mothers traveling with young children who survived. The Shreveport, La., to Houston bus careened across'the median of the four-lane road, crashed through a guardrail, became airborne briefly and landed on the bank 31 feet below. Reagan raises IMF contribution WASHINGTON - President Reagan signed legislation yesterday author izing an $8,5 billion increase in the U.S. contribution to the InternationalV Monetary Fund, bringing to a formal close one of the hardest-fought congressional battles of the year. The president's signature had never been in doubt. The administration for a year fought accusations that the bill was nothing more than a bail-out of large U.S. banks whose loans to developing countries were in jeopardy, arguing that the money was vital to keep the international financial system afloat and preserve jobs in U.S. export industries. The money is the U.S. share of some $50 billion in increased contributions agreed to last year by the 146 member countries in the fund. The Fund makes loans to governments, particularly those in trouble with their balance of payments. It has said it would have to curtail its lending without the new contributions. 0 b Micbigan 1ai l Thursday, December 1, 1983 Vol. XCI V-jVo. 70 (ISSN 0745-967X) The Michigan Daily is edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan. Published daily Tuesday through Sunday mornings during the University year at 420 Maynard Street, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 48109. Sub- scription rates: $15.50 September through April (2 semesters); $19.50 by mail outside Ann Arbor. Summer session published Tuesday through Satur- day mornings. Subscription rates: $8 in Ann Arbor; $10 by mail outside Ann Arbor. Second class postage paid at Ann Arbor, Michigan. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to THE MICHIGAN DAILY, 420 Maynard Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109. 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