Tony,
I guess one way would be to change DATE to TIMESTAMP
Don't you mean: change TIMESTAMP to DATE?
Oracle does also have a DATE data-type -- which contains a "date" part and a "time" part. The TIMESTAMP type is new in Oracle 9i and adds a "fraction-of-second" part to the "date" and "time" parts. So go ahead, change your database column's data-type from TIMESTAMP to DATE.
Good Luck,
Avi.