A View From The Lighthouse Where did summer go? Well it’s time for us to go back to school again. I don’t know if it is just me, but summer went by way too fast this year. We at the Beacon are looking forward to an exciting year of putting out newspapers. But coming back to school also means many other things that we as students have to be prepared to deal with. For those of you who are coming to college for the first time, the transition to college life can be very difficult. While college is not half as hard as everyone in high school made it out to be (for some reason high school teachers love telling horror stories about how hard college will be) it still requires a lot of work and effort. So here is a little advice from those who have gone before you into the abyss of college life. First things first, SLEEP. 1 cannot stress this enough. Take it from someone who knows, trying to go a week on no sleep does not work. Try reading a paper you’ve written after not sleeping for three days, it’ll be the funniest thing you have ever read! Staying awake in class on a full night’s sleep is hard enough, but on no sleep, it is almost impossible. And if a professor has to wake you up for snoring too loud or not answering when called upon, life as you know it will come to a screeching halt. Another major item to remember is not to put things off. Procrastination is the worst thing for a college student to do. Got something Send a letter to the editor to behrcoll2@aol.com The Behrend Beacon published weekly by the students of Penn State Erie, The Behrend College Editor-in-Chief Jason Snyder Managing Editor Michael Frawley News Editors Liz Hayes Heather Twining - assistant Editorial Page Editor Katie Galley Features Editors Karl Benacci Jermaine Hardy Arts & Entertainment Deanna Symoski Sports Editor Doug Smith Wire Service Editor Rob Wynne Calendar Page Editor Nicole Greene Photo Editors Jeff Miller Becky Weindorf Associate Editors Libbie Johnson Jill Seaholm published weekly by the students of Penn State Erie, The Behrend College; First Floor, The J. Elmer Reed Union Building, Station Road, Erie, PA 16563. The Beacon can be reached by calling (814) 898-6488 or (814) 898-6019 (FAX). ISSN 1071- 9288. Take it from people who know, waiting for the last minute then trying to write a five-page paper. Waiting, too, for the last minute to try and get everything that you have due done is just asking for trouble. I know that it is very hard to get back into the swing of things after being off for the summer, but unfortunately we have very little choice. Remember how ambitious you were last year when you scheduled that 8:00 a.m. class? I know that after you try to drag yourself out of bed for the first time that early, you will have an overwhelming urge to drop that class. Take it from someone who knows, don’t do it. You’ll be a lot happier getting the class out of the way, instead of trying to take a 26-credit semester later on. Hopefully these few hints will help you become adjusted to college life a little faster and enjoy the college experience much more. College can be a great time in your life, as long as you put as much effort into your schoolwork as you do into having fun. Good Luck! to say? Say It! Letter Policy: The Beacon encourages letters to the editor. Letters should include the address, phone number, semester standing and major of the writer. Writers can mail letters to behrcoll2@aol.com. Letters must be received no later than 5 p.m. Tuesday for inclusion in that week’s issue. The Beacon is Advertising Manager Kim Zuck Business Manager Kristine Harakat Office Manager Kevin Bruner Public Relations Ainslie Ulmer Secretary Melissa Proha Advisors Robert Sped This Is Earth , Have We Met? MARCH 17, 2000 What a college education means to me: an essay Ltxik out world, but I think I am about to defend Behrend. Yes, you heard cor rectly: this editorial may actually point out gcxxl tilings about our school, rather than bashing it for its many huge, embarrass ing failures. Recently, I have been con fronted with some opinions about how the school as a whole is failing to provide stu dents with a proper and complete educa tion. These views have come from stu- dents, patents, Erie community members, and even a few local "celebrities.” Wait a minute ... 1 retract the celebrity part of that; let me say local pinheads instead. Maybe I have been missing the point of college die past few years. Maybe die candy shell around my brain has grown a little too thick. Maybe my brain is clogged with a bit too much malted hops and bong resin. But isn’t there .supposed to be more to the "college experience" than just in class situations? I thought students were encouraged to do more than just sit in lec ture halls all day, listening to die some times endless droning of our teaching es tablishment. I thought doing something other than studying or watching WWF Smackdown in the evenings was a good When choosing a school, don’t people look for the extras a school oilers? Does it have varsity sports teams'? Does it have social organizations? Does it have clubs aid oiganizations that interest me? I real ize it’s been a few years since I was look- Living the Behrend life, Commuter style All right, so I’m that girl you see in the halls with car keys jingling in her purse and with luggage for books, pens, pencils, a calculator, change of clothes for work, money for food, and a snowbrush for my parents' red van that I drive to school everyday. I'm telling you, the com muter life isn’t as smooth as it gets - sure, I get home-cooked meals ev ery night and my job doesn’t involve preparing food in Bruno’s. And I have a car at my fingertips when ever I say, but the commuter life is much more than just that. Allow me to present the commuter day, typi cal of the Weindorf household: 1 have a 9:30 class today, but 1 set my alarm for 7:15 a.m. because my dad needs the hot water by 8 a.m. And 1 supposedly use all the hot wa ter in the twenty minutes it takes me to shower (I don’t, really!). So af ter I grumble a few injustices about having to share the shower (hey, there's little sisters all over the place - I have to grumble everything now), 1 walk in the bathroom and find that the toilet, is, well, backed up (I am not kidding). So 1 grumble a few more curses A View A little too much sex ed? Psst... Hey you, come over here .. yeah, it’s okay, no one is watching you read this column. We’re going to talk about sex . . . Okay, now that we have your attention, the staff of the Beacon would like to give some thumbs up and some thumbs down (heh heh, get it? up and down?) to a few campus events. And just to keep your interest, we’ll talk a little bit about First, hats off to Trigon for holding the most attended event of the semester The Safer Sex Cabaret. Held in the Studio Theatre (yes, we know it’s a small building), on Thursday, January 27, the group promoted HIV prevention through a number of silly skits. Topics covered included forbidden passion, body piercing, condom use, homemade lubricants, dirty dancing, and of course, masturbation. What fun! Congratulations, again, Trigon. You guys found the key for successful event turnouts! Hold on, losing interest already? Here’s a little something to keep you Liz Hayes HilVi \ IS il ,\Vvd\ ing at colleges (lots of fieople go to col lege for seven years . . .). but 1 seem to recall these questions coming up quite a bit. Tme, I made sure Penn Slate had the academic programs 1 was interested in. hut a lot of schtxils oiler my major. The de ciding factors were the extracurricular things a school could boast. So. correct me if I'm wrong, hut wouldn't that indi- cate that extracurricular activine,, play a pretty decisive part in education' 1 I linmm. prov<x:ative. Therefore, one can imagine my dismay when 1 learned that si nne e\ cuts Ivmg held at Behrend were being called unnecessary and uneducalional. As tar as I'm con cerned, just alxmt any thing can Iv a learn ing experience lor somelxxly. S|xirts. lor instance, encourage fundamental lvha\- iors like teamwork and drive for success. Organizations like SCIA. .IRC. and ('om muter Council provide leadership and in volvement opportunities lor siudenls. From U\ Becky Weindorf about how my 12-year--ok! mMci can't take one second in unclogging it, but luckily, I don't have to because it soon clears. 1 then remember my dog, who needs to be thrown in die snow' (she's a big baby when it comes to going out) before I can jump in the shower, .shivering It is now 7:25 a.m., another five minutes of hot water shaved off my dad's shower. So 1 kick the doe back in the house, run upstairs, and jump in the shower, and to my dismay the stu pid drain in the shower is clogged, too. And 1 grumble more injustices. Then I’m done with my shower, jump out, smear some lotion on my legs, and walk over to the sink in the rom the Li reading: A little boy returning home from his first day at school said to his mother, “Mum, what's sex'.’" His mother, who believed in all the most modern educational theories, gave him a detailed explanation, covering all aspects of the tricky subject. When she had finished, the little lad produced an enrollment form which he had brought home from school and said. “Yes. but how am 1 going to get all that into this one little square?” Funny, eh? While sex is a prime topic for jokes with your friends on just about any occasion, the openness on campus has raised controversial issues lately, such as the transgender student on campus. The point to observe here is that there is more to [college] life than sex. You say that’s a ridiculous statement? Well, look at it this way... you’ve probably heard more on campus about the transgender student than you have about some of the other good things, like the men’s and women’s basketball teams and the increasingly focused Student Government Groups like MCC.Trigon, and the Cam pus Ministries allow people to gain expe rience with cultures and viewpoints that differ from their own. Let’s face it just about any experience you can gain by in teracting with [xxiple on any level will help y ou in the "real world," and I'm not talk ing MTV, people. Hell, even socializing with the Greeks could be helpful some day. Maybe they weren't the smartest guy s, maybe they spent a little too much time linking off balconies, but they had fun. And 1 bet they even taught you some thing that will helpyou someday. If noth ing else, whenever you are on Jeopanlx or Who Wants tubea Millionaitr. you will know a few more letters of the Greek al phabet than you otherwise wouldn’t have. I will even go so far as to defend the general education system at Penn State. I'm here to receive a liberal ails educa tion. 1 was well aware when 1 came in that I would be taking a wide variety of classes. I think it is called “broadening my horizons?" Maybe I will never pro fessionally use my knowledge of Shakes|x.*ate. But when the boss is talk ing alxmt the performance o i Hamlet he is alxmt to see. maybe I can score some Bmw nie points with my knowledge of the subject. Or when my contemporaries are arguing which President decided to nuke Hiroshima, at least I will confidently be able ti i say that it wasn't Andrew Jackson. Yeah, people are graduating in just a shade Here next half of the bathroom to dry my hair. My six-year old sister walks in with a purple sweatsuit and asks me how I am doing. I say I'm doing good, and she goes downstairs to wait lor mom to make her breakfast. 1 walk back to my room to change and feel perturbed at the sight of my room, since I just cleaned the damn thing tw o days ago, and now it looks messy again. More injustices mumbled. I make my way downstairs, decid ing to toast a bagel and peel a tan gerine to eat on the way to school, and my mom asks if I can take some videos back to Wegman’s since they would be overdue today. 1 say fine and fill up a bottle of water, care fully avoiding my dog, my little sis ter, and my dad, who just got up and turned on the cold shower upstairs. (No injustices mumbled from him, he's allowed to shout them ‘in his house'!) So I leave ten minutes early and find that I have this to carry out to the car: my bagel, tangerine, bottle of water, keys, parking permit, coat, gloves, purse, bookbag, and three rental videos plus boots that I hthouse ! FEBRUARY 4, 2000 Association Last winter, the SGA promoted and held a forum open to any and all students w'ho wished to voice an opinion about campus life and events. Yes, it was free, and yes, SGA was waiting for you. No one showed up. However, many students did show up for the free food that was given away the week before by SGA. Another point to observe we all love fun and free stuff, but when it comes to dealing with the issues and doing some work, well ... “I had a lot of studying to do.” So, theoretically, if SGA promotes sex in some way when it’s time to go to the polls, will we have to call Police and Safety for crowd control? Another big happening last year on campus was the success of the basketball teams. Yes, it was a very big deal to the athletes, but is it to you? The men and women both had very successful conference records. This is REALLY big. There are some very talented athletes here at Behrcnd, and they are giving our good school a better name. Why not FRIDAY, AUGUST 18, 2000 under a decade, but is that necessarily the school's fault.’ I know too many people who don't talk to their advisor until it is too late and they are already screwed. And how many people actually have a blue bcxik, you know, those things that tell you what to take and when to take it? Maybe if people would mad that tiling once in a while instead of having older classmates sched ule for them they’d manage to graduate on What's my point? Now that's not really a mystery. It's actually simpler than you think - everything you do in college, ev erything you leam. everything you experi ence, everything you want to kick your self in the ass for doing, everything is go ing to help you someday. The world isn’t a bubble anymore. That global village ev eryone is talking about is gonna be your new hometow n. There will be Asians, there will be laitinos, there will be Africans, there will be lesbians, there will be Democrats, there will be atheists. There may even be a straight, patriotic, wears-the-pants-in-the family, average white man, though he is a dying breed. So get out there and leam something to morrow. Be it the location of Davenport (it's in lowa 22 miles from the border of Illinois), or how to read (. . . top to bot tom, left to right, group words together as a sentence. Take Tylenol for headaches, Midol for any cramps.), I guarantee it will help you someday. FEBRUARY 11, 2000 haven't attempted to put on yet. Time: 8:37 u.m.. an hour before my first class. 1 sigh and dump my lug gage in the red van and start to head out of the subdivision, sliding off the road and spinning my whcqls, to Wegman's. Not that 1 have anything against Wegman's , since I work there, but come on. I drop off the videos and slip and slide my way to Behrcnd, avoiding huge trucks and snowdrifts that de cided to form in the middle of the highway, spit out the seeds from my tangerine while driving with one hand, manage to find tracks on Exit 9 to get off the cursed highway, and I mumble more injustices over the blasting radio. As soon as 1 make it to a parking spot on the ice rink we call a park ing lot, I pull in the spot and belt out some tunes by Celine Dion on the radio. I get out of the car with my luggage and you see me, wondering why 1 can y so much crap to school instead of leaving it in my room. And 1 grumble more injustices, ones you cannot hear, since my six - year - old sister would repeat them if 1 got out of my routine. go out and cheer for them? Instead of supporting these guys and girls, we’d rather watch other guys and girls talk about condoms and masturbation. Lack of support to the athletics program raises another issue. What about the massive recreation facility that’s going to being built across Jordan Road? Oh yes, the athletes will love it, but will they have to stare at 1400 empty seats instead of 300 empty seats? If two superb basketball teams can’t fill Erie Hall, what will fill the ARC? Now, we are in no way criticizing Trigon’s promotion of safer sex and HIV prevention. It is the awareness of some student’s priorities, however, that worries us. It’s time to look at the important issues, people. There is a lot going on at Behrend right now, both academically and athletically. A major point to realize, though, is that involvement in all of Behrend’s extracurriculars will only enhance student life on campus, and make it possible to promote more “fun” activities. Y ? % \ ", * )\\S / \ i
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers