Thursday, October 3, 1996 Where by Joneatra Henry Collegian staff Last week, the Multi-Cultural Council held its tenth annual Harambee dinner. 1 ant proud to see that Bchrend has celebrated diversity continuously throughout my years here. Each year, the crowd at Harambee has become more diverse. Harambee is an African tradition, but the guests at the dinner were of different ethnicities. The center pieces on the table held different flags, representing all nationalities, stressing the "pulling together" at Behrend. Students sat at tables with community members as well as faculty and staff. I read a poem which I feel anyone interested in achieving diversity should read: The White House response to “Primary Colors,” in contrast to the media uproar, was startlingly relaxed. President Clinton himself joked that the authorship was the first secret that had been kept in Washington. George Stephanopolous and other aides commented on the book’s “creepy” and “eerie” accuracy. What Dole left out by Kevin Schoolcraft Collegian staff The Republican and Democratic conventions have historically been a way for the nominated candidates to present what their party stands for in what is called the party platform. However, this year there was a little twist in the Republican convention held in San Diego, California. The Republican candidate. Bob Dole, left out a very important part of the convention, the "party's platform." This had loyal Republicans like myself appalled and discouraged: How could Bob Dole just abandon the party platform, the most important issues that solidify support from his own party? I think John Rossomando (a Behrend student who critically analyzed the Republican convention from San Diego) said it best even though his views were narrow. Rossomando wrote, "Everyone was more interested in electing Bob Dole and Jack Kemp than fighting over minor issues like abortion" (Behrend Collegian, Thurs., Sept 12, 1996, p. 7). This statement said it all. There was not a word spoken at the Republican convention about "major" issues like abortion, crime, or the economy. This was an embarrassment to the entire Republican party and should not go the rainbow ends Where the Rainbow Ends by Richard Rive Where the rainbow ends There's going to be a place, brother, Where the world can sing all sorts of songs, together, brother. You and I, though you're white and I'm It's going to be a sad song, brother, Because we don't know the tune, And it's a difficult tune to learn. But we can learn it, brother, you and I. There's no such tune as a black tune. There's no such tune as a white tune. There’s only music, brother, And it's music we're going to sing Where the rainbow ends. At the end of the rainbow, there is a place where all races will live in harmony. Although we are all different and speak Yet the portrait of Clinton in the book is scabrous. It depicts a demagogue with gargantuan ap petites for political power, food and women who in fact tries to have sex with just about anything that moves. In politics he is crooked and deceptive, cruel if need be. The scabrous portrait of Clinton in “Primary Colors” is consistent with As far as Rossomondo declaring abortion to be a minor issue in the United States, this too should not go unrecognized. This view, although defended by his own right to freedom of speech, cannot be farther from the truth. We already know that more abortion protesters have been arrested than the entire civil rights movement This issue that has affected each and everyone of our lives as Americans cannot be even remotely considered as a minor issue. Bob Dole and Rossomondo may have their own right to express their views. However, if more and more Republicans start to adopt these views, I may just find myself employing another political party. different languages, we will be able to communicate with and understand each other in this place. It will not matter what race one is because the song will not be difficult to learn. No one race will have an advantage, and we will all learn the verses along the way. Discrimination will blow away in the wind, and racism will fade into the clouds. Tolerance will storm down and spread throughout each culture, and after the storm, a beautiful rainbow will appear. In this place, black will no longer be negative, nor will white be positive; the only colors are the colors of the rainbow singing one harmonious tune where the rainbow ends. With celebrations such as Harambee, Behrend has the opportunity to be a place where the rainbow ends. what emerges in the dozen or so al legedly nonfiction books that have appeared, as well as in the testimony of the almost forgotten Arkansas state troopers. No such White House indifference met Gary Aldrich’s “Unlimited Ac cess,” which purports to be a first hand account of disorderly White House behavior during Aldrich’s two-year stint as a security man. The White House counterattack to “Unlimited Access” was instant and effective. The White House received key help when it was revealed that one claim in the book was hearsay and gossip that Clinton sneaked out of the White House for midnight hotel trysts. But that is not the entire book. Clinton spokesman Mike McCurry recently was obliged to apologize for his offhand remark that he himself had once used marijuana. The remark was clearly inadequate to the charge, by Aldrich and others, that the White House staff is full of former hard-core drug users. How about the Christmas tree episode? Aldrich claims that he was obliged to help decorate a Christmas tree in the White House with orna ments some art students gave to the Clintons. “It was a mobile of 12 lords a-leap ing," Aldrich writes. “They were leaping all right ... each was naked and had an erection.” It does not iona amount to nuclear esi :?v - The Behrend College Collegian - Page Books by Ralph Hollenbeck SUSPECTS, by Thomas Berger (Morrow: S23.OC' A meld of Sir Walter Scott’s “Oh, what a tangled web we weave” and Sir William Gilbert’s “The policeman’s lot is not a happy one" would provide an ideal summation of Thomas Berger’s latest novel. Berger, author of such best-sellers as “Little Big Man” and “Neighbors,” himself has one of his characters describe the commitment that uniforms and plainclothesmen (and women) in law enforcement as sume. “The job makes a lot of demands on you, and usually comes before your personal life," Nick Moody, Detective First Grade, states. “The public never sees the worst of what you confront day after day ... Sickening stuff you never suspected was possible, at least not in this country. You’re not only sup posed to handle it but rise above it and go on to something that’s worse, and then rise above that and still be human.” Ironically, Moody, diverted from his planned suicide, offers that advice to one Lloyd Howland, whose sudden appreciation of Moody and the Force is one of those O. Hen ryesque twists in Berger’s narrative. Lloyd, a drifter, had been one of the suspects in the particularly gruesome murder of his sister-in-law, Donna, and his young niece. So was Lloyd’s half-brother, Larry, the rising young salesman whose supposed business trip masked a tryst with his boss’ amoral wife. Even the police are not as true blue as one could hope. Berger’s burrowing beneath the green sod of suburbia lays bare the rather unpleasant reality of much small-town life in a most engrossing fiction. is not an attractive vignette of the Clintons. The Aldrich book is full of such material, yet it has been successfully trashed because of the discredited midnight-tryst allegation. I suppose the White House could take a casual attitude toward the Klein novel because it is fiction. Yet the point of the book is that it is not really fiction, but essentially true. And I suppose the White House felt it had to nail the Aldrich book be cause it came from a member of the staff, a particularly dangerous source of inside information. Of course, the staff would not be a dangerous source if life in the White House could stand public scrutiny. ge, but it IBof =%fz o' \ CD
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