puge 4- The Behrend Collegi Beacon. Thursday. October 29. 199$
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A view from the lighthouse
Vote for Fall Break the right
decision
The University Faculty Senate met
on Tuesday and voted to implement a
Fall Break starting in 1999. This has
been an issue that has been discussed
for a long time in our own Student
Government Association and also in
the Campus of Commonwealth Stu
dent Governments. Penn State only
has one holiday during the Fall semes
ter, not including Thanksgiving. That
one holiday is Labor Day. only a week
after classes start.
Nearly every other college and uni
versity in the United Slates has some
sort of break in the Fall. In fact. Penn
State has one of the longest semesters
of any university in the country. Al
though Graham Spanter. Penn State's
president, commented that some of the
faculty are proud of our long semes
ter. many students aren't so happy at
this fact. The long stretch between
Labor Day and Thanksgiving gives
students no opportunity to catch up on
work they ha\e fallen behind on. or
simply take a break.
The University Faculty Senate made
a good decision when they voted in
Some good news about
teens and safe sex
By David W. Kaplan
Special to The Washington Post
New figures from the Centers lor
Disease Control (CDC) show that
since 1991, the proportion of Ameri
can high school students who have
never had sexual intercourse has risen
11 percent. The percentage of young
men who have never had sexual in
tercourse has risen from 43 to just
over 51 percent, and of young
women, from 49 to 52 percent. In a
nation with high teenager rates of
sexually transmitted diseases (STDs);
including HIV, unintended pregnancy
and births; this is excellent news.
At the same time, sexually active
high school students now are more
likely to use condoms and less likely
to have multiple sexual partners than
teenagers in 1991. Nearly 63 percent
of the young men and 51 percent ol
the young women used a condom dur
ing their most recent sexual inter-
course
Both the abstinence-only crowd
and the abstinence-plus-contracep
tives crowd; the conservative anti the
liberal sides ol the sexuality educa
tion controversy; are taking credit lor
these heartening data. I think both
should take some credit. Messages to
postpone sex and those to 'Have Sale
Sex or No Sex" are not mutually ex
clusive but compatible and comple
mentary.
In fact, extensive research shows
that sexuality education that empha
sizes abstinence and includes contra
ceptive information and services
helps youth in two ways. It helps ab
stinent youth delay the onset of sexual
intercourse, and it supports young
people in protecting themselves from
unintended pregnancy and STDs
once they become sexually active.
A recent fact-finding mission to the
Netherlands. France and Germany,
sponsored by Advocates lor Youth
and the University of North Carolina
Editor in Chief
\rilU' Ril/ottC
Managing Editor
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Features Editor
Joti Siubbs
Sports Editor
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Letter Policy: The Beacon
encourages letters to the editor.
Letters should include the address,
phone number, semester standing and
major of the w riter. Writers can mail
their letters to behrcoll2t«'aol com.
Letters must be received no later than
spm Tuesday for inclusion in that
week s issue.
favor of the Fall Break. Having one
of the longest semesters of any college
is of no advantage to students. In fact,
the long stretch between breaks is most
likely detrimental to many students, as
they have no rest during the semester.
Another benefit of a semester break
is that students who don't live close to
school can see their families before
Thanksgiving. If a student live many
hours away, just a weekend isn't
enough time to go home lor a visit.
This can result in a student's going sev
eral months without seeing her or hjs
fanulv. This break would provide that
opportunity.
at Charlotte, found striking differ
ences between the United States and
these European nations. The Euro
pean approach to teenage sexuality is
characterized by openness and readily
available free or low-cost contracep
tive services and information. Teen
reproductive health is a public health,
not a political or religious, issue. Re
search drives public health policies
to reduce unintended pregnancies,
abortion and STDs. Teenagers receive
open, honest, consistent information
about sexuality from parents, grand
parents, media, schools and health
care providers. The government
funds massive, consistent, long-term
public education campaigns using
television, radio, discos, billboards,
pharmacies and clinics to deliver
clear, explicit portrayals of respon
sible sexual behavior. Mass media are
partners with government and health
officials in this campaign.
The result: Birih rates of 13 per
1,000 teenage women in Germany,
nine per 1,000 in France and seven
per 1,000 in the Netherlands com
pared with 55 per 1 .000 in the United
States. Rates of STDs, including HIV,
are four to seven times lower in these
European countries than in the United
By contrast, in the United States,
teenagers are exhorted to "Just Say
No" until marriage. The result: Teen
agers in the United States Irequently
report that intercourse "just hap
pened" or "was an accident." What
this means is that many American
teenagers are having unprotected
sexual intercourse because they feel
guilty when they protect themselves,
since contraception is planned. To
underline this point, the recent CDC
survey found that 37 percent of the
young men and 49 pereent of the
young women did not use condoms
the last time they had sexual inter-
course
Current responses in the United
Rose I on, si
The Critic
Pro-life groups must preach non-violence
There are holy wars being waged
today, and not all of them are spill
ing only Muslim and Arab blood.
Right here in the United States, a
countrv that was founded on the be
liefs of religious freedom, snipers
and bombers who believe they have
God on their side are killing doctors
who perform abortions. Last Friday,
Dr Barnett Slepian. a gynecologist
and obstettician in Amherst. New
York, was shot to death in his own
kitchen by a sniper as his wife and
one ol then four sons watched on.
Slepian was known to perform
abortions and to speak out in sup
port of a woman's right to choose.
He was known by his friends to be
quiet, but stubborn. Betsy Kozinn,
a nurse who worked with Slepian
said of the doctor: "As long as abor
tion was legal, he would provide
safe, legal abortions ... He wasn’t
going to be bullied by somebody else
to not do it. He didn’t enjoy doing
The Lobster and the music to the dance of life
Space, The Final Frontier
With John Glenn, the first
American to orbit the Earth, getting
ready to return to space at the age of
77, many people are re-evaluating the
space program. Some see this is as
only a beginning, and anxiously
await the coming years. Others,
however, feel that the space program
is waste of time and that sending an
old man into space is a waste of time
and resources. These people are ig-
norant.
The history of mankind is tilled
with tales of exploration. It is a de
fining part of our collective culture.
We have an innate need to learn
more, to expand our horizons and
explore the unknown. Why else
would we have climbed to Mount
Everest, reach the poles, dive under
the seas or reach across the oceans?
States, such as the congressionally
mandated abstinence-until-marriage
education, indicate that policymakers
are not taking stock of reality. The
average age of puberty is now under
13, the average age of marriage is 26
for men and 25 for women, and by
age 20, about 90 percent of young
people have initiated sexual inter
course.
What the United States most ur
gently needs is to protect all of its
youth, both the sexually active and
the sexually abstinent. That means
continuing to encourage and support
young people in choosing abstinence
and actively encouraging and sup
porting young people in protecting
themselves when they have sexual in-
tercourse
Kaplun is chief of adolescent medi
cine and a professor of pediatrics at
the University of Colorado Health
Sciences Center and the Children’s
Hospital in Denver.
Editorial
them, but he felt that no one else
would
While no pro-life organization has
taken credit for the doctor's slaying,
one would guess that the sniper held
the same beliefs as many right-to-fife
institutions do. “There are no words
to describe the person who did this,”
says neighbor Sal Curcil. “If you’re
a right-to-lifer, that’s all life, includ
ing the doctor.” Mr. Curcil is exactly
right. How pro-family could a per
son he that kills a father of four sons,
ages 7 to 15?
My personal beliefs about abortion
are tar from the point at hand. For
all purposes herein, I shall remain
completely neutral on the subject.
My guess is that the members of pro
life groups do not want this kind of
publicity. However, they have done
very little, or at least obviously not
enough, to prevent such attacks. Vio
lent events such as this and the
bombing of a North Carolina abor-
Space is indeed the final frontier, an
area so massive that it boggles the
mind. With the world growing
smaller and smaller through ad
vances in technology, and a high birth
rate, we must expand ourselves once
again.
The quest for knowledge is the
greatest endeavor someone can un
dertake. By acquiring new informa
tion we satiate our curiosity and im
prove the lives of everyone. That is
what the space program does. It is a
quest for knowledge about the larger
world around us. Sure, some people
prefer to
focus on just understanding our
planet, but it’s time to wake up, to
realize that we are a part of some
thing much bigger than anyone can
possibly imagine. And by under-
Old Laws Work Against Net Porn
1998, Los Angeles Times editorial
There are several widely held no
tions about Internet-related crime.
One holds that law enforcement can
not deal with quick-hit criminals
whose global computer transactions
can be accomplished in seconds. An
other is that the police forces of many
nations will never close ranks to
share information and coordinate in
vestigations. Still another holds that
Washington must have the means to
decode computer encryption if law
enforcement is to do its job. As Los
Angeles Times staff writers Mark
Fritz and Solomon Moore showed
last Friday in an article about a child
pornography investigation, none are
necessarily true.
U.S. Customs Service computer
experts worked closely with local law
enforcement and several foreign po
lice agencies to conduct, over the
course of two days, 100 raids in Cali
fornia and 21 other states and in Aus
tralia, Austria, Belgium, Britain, Fin-
tion clinic this summer are seriously
hurting right-to-life groups' credibil
ity and political power.
Earlier in the summer, during
“Gay Day” at Disney World, extreme
conservative groups brought their
families down to Orlando, Flordia.
to shout slurs and obscenities to
openly gay patrons of the amusement
park. The contorted faces of mostly
white protestors and their children
damning the homosexuals to hell as
they passively walked through the
gates and into the park were
reminicent of the faces of young
schoolboys and schoolgirls
harrassing the first black students to
be integrated into public schools.
The sexually insecure homopho
bic protestors claimed that they were
preaching Christ’s word as they os
tracized the openly gay men and
women. No matter how badly the
protestors desecrated the Bible to
turn it into a message of hate, many
standing that larger universe that sur
rounds us we learn not only about
distant objects, which we may never
see, but also about our past, and our
possible future.
It is a sad world that we live in
if people are more concerned about
the cost of scientific progress than in
the progress itself. What would have
happened if Columbus never got the
financing for his trip? Don't worry
about how much the Space Program
costs, because the information that it
generates will pay you back several
fold.
Back to the story of John Glenn.
There are already two companies of
fering flights into space, so custom
ers can experience weightlessness. It
is also estimated that within twenty
years, private enterprise will be fi
land, France, Germany, Italy, the
Netherlands, Norway, Portugal,
Spain and Sweden. Their target was
the largest Internet child pornogra
phy ring discovered to date, known
as Wonderland.
“I’m unaware of another police
operation that has ever pulled to
gether so many law enforcement
agencies worldwide,” Bob Packham,
the deputy director general of
Britain’s National Crime Squad, told
a reporter.
Wonderland was a tight-knit group
that freely traded 100,000 images of
child pornography. Its members had
production studios for live child sex
shows that they transmitted over the
Net. The operation had a computer
security designer and programming
and hardware specialists who built a
daunting array of codes and power
ful encryption to maintain secrecy.
Encryption employs complicated
algorithms to scramble documents
until they can be decoded by the in
tended receiver. Although encryption
religious leaders would agree that
Christ did not scream and spit in the
faces of Jews to get them to listen to
him. Even conservative priests and
pastors who concede that homosexu
ality is wrong would most likely
agree that this kind of behavior is the
wrong way of communicating their
message.
Whenever I see the Pope visiting
a country to speak, I don't want to
think of him as a leader of a terror
ist-hate group. Conservative alli
ances must speak out more fre
quently against such violent acts
against humanity. The Religious
Right must do so quickly and ada
mantly to keep the political power
they have and to remain clean and
credible. If they do not, "God" may
soon become a devil term.
Stubbs is features editor for The
Beacon. The Critic appears every
three weeks
nancing most space missions. You
could very well retire in a condo
floating in space, where the low grav
ity will allow you to live for years
longer. John Glenn is once again
explorer. He is risking his life to gain
more information about the universe
around us, and its effects on people.
His work over the next several days
could very well impact your life in
the
future. So don’t try to put a price tag
on exploration, and don’t be upset
that an old man is using tax money
to return to space. Think of it as an
investment in your future.
Perkins is layout editor for The Bea
con. His column appears every three
surely will be a backbone of trust and
security in the electronic communi
cations and business transactions of
the future, U.S. federal law enforce
ment agencies presently maintain
that they need access and eavesdrop
ping ability to prevent criminals from
plying their trade in secrecy. But in
the child pornography case, tradi
tional law enforcement means like
wiretaps, search warrants and mes
sage tracing proved sufficient. In
other words, traditional methods
were applied to a new medium.
Some privacy advocates are un
nerved by what they see as entrap
ment in this case, but that’s prepos
terous. Depravity has been brought
to light. Some of the children de
picted have been identified as rela
tives and neighbors of accused Won
derland members.
This case exposes vile secrets. But
more important, it shows how an
electronically well-defended crime
ring can be broken without
overarching laws and assaults on pri
vacy.