page 6 - The Behrend College Beacon - Thursday, March 4, 1999
Prisoners
By Daniel Rubin
Knight-Ridder Newspapers
PHILADELPHIA
eourt advantage. The visiting team
runs a 400-yard gauntlet, past signs
about drug-sniffing dogs and
warnings to stiek together, through
hundreds of inmates milling about in
uniforms the eolor of dried blood.
“Yo, you're a tall one!" "You’re
going down!”
The guests are from the
Philadelphia College of Bible, 13
lanky, fresh-faeed basketball players
who learned the game in such plaees
as Glennallen, Alaska, and Billings,
Mont., guys comfortable saying,
"Dang!” and "Good grief!”
They’ve traveled an hour to face a
team from the State Correctional
Institution at Graterford. Starting for
Graterford are two murderers and
three men in for drug-related crimes
and armed robberv.
The officials are inmates paid 86
cents per game. The man keeping the
clock is himself doing time, the
scorekeeper just counting the days.
And high above the eourt, sitting in
judgment, are hundreds of jeering
spectators. Going behind penitentiary
walls is nothing new for the PCB
Eagles. During the season, they
scrimmage in a number of
Philadelphia prisons. They see the
games as part of their ministry, and.
Court refuses
By Jan Crawford Greenburg
Knight-Ridder Tribune
WASHINGTON Rejecting an
argument by an Ohio woman banned
from playing collegiate volleyball, the
Supreme Court Tuesday refused to
expand the scope of certain federal
anti-discrimination laws.
The unanimous ruling was a victory
for the National Collegiate Athletic-
Association, which was hit with a sex
discrimination lawsuit after it
prohibited Renee Smith from playing
volleyball. Smith argued that the
NCAA should be liable under a
federal education law that prohibits
sex discrimination in "any education
program or activity receiving federal
financial assistance." The NCAA gets
no federal money directly, but Smith
Superfast Internet 2 just for Universities for now
By Reid Kanaley
Knight-Ridder Newspapers
Not online yet'.' You are about to
fall even further behind. An ultrahigh
speed “Internet?" was introduced in
Washington today with promises of
big-screen interactive video, the end
of fist-pounding download delays and
uses yet to be invented.
For now, however, the $5OO million
system is only for experimental use
by universities and industry
researchers. Everyone else will have
to wait. The benefits of Internet 2 will
not trickle down to the common,
salivating Web surfer for a few years,
at least. And though it will make
possible Internet connections tens of
thousands of times faster than a 56K
Students build Lego cities
By Clark Surratt
Knight-Ridder Newspapers
COLUMBIA, S.C
main lobby of USC’s engineering
school this morning, and you’re likely
to see some bleary-eyed students.
Since 10 a.m. Sunday, teams of
engineering students have been
working shifts to see who can build
the best city, out of LEGOs.
Four groups of students: chemical
engineers, civil engineers, mechanical
engineers and freshmen, were given
a big pile of colorful LEGO pieces
and 24 hours to build and explain their
design. Beyond the basic rules, the
contestants didn’t know exactly what
they were getting into.
“It looks like somebody took a
bunch of LEGOs nobody wanted, put
them in a dump truck and brought 'em
here,” freshman builder Shawn Lowe
said. “We might have gotten leftover
parts because we were freshmen,” he
joked later.
All the students got the same basic
load of parts, but there was some
variation. They were free to trade
play basketball with students from Bible college
afterward, they talk about Christ.
Since it's a privilege for inmates to
play, the contests are surprisingly
clean, says the collegians’ coach, Don
Martindell, 43, himself a former
bible-school ballplayer. "You
probably get more cheap shots from
other teams on our schedule," he says.
But Graterford, a maximum-security
prison in Montgomery County, is
different, he reminds his players
before their trip Tuesday night. It's
bigger, tighter, tougher. They’ll bring
in just one ball; entering last year,
they were frisked.
Before their departure from an
arena nicknamed "the Pink Palace”
on their Langhorne campus, they
huddle around Eric Judge, 20, a
grandson of Alaskan missionaries,
who oilers the blessing; "Lord, we
thank you for this opportunity to tell
some people about You. We pray we
go in with a humble attitude and play
very hard and bring some respect to
ourselves.”
This is home-
It takes a half-hour at Graterford
to be processed through "The Gate,"
where the collegians produce picture
IDs, have their hands stamped, and
receive wristbands and warnings
about personal contact with inmates.
The trash talk starts immediately.
"If y’all can't beat no convicts . . .
.'' "I don't know' how well they'd take
to losing." And this is from the
guards. In T-shirts and shorts, the
argued it was subject to the law. Title
IX of the Education Amendments of
1972, because it gels dues from
colleges that receive federal aid.
That argument, if adopted, could
have had an enormous impact. Had
the justices agreed, it could have
meant a host of other entities, such as
vendors or other athletic associations,
also were covered by the law. Those
entities also could be subject to
lawsuits under similar laws that
prohibit discrimination in federally
funded programs based on a person's
race, age or disability.
But the justices swiftly rejected the
argument, in a ruling that came just a
month after the case was argued.
"Dues payments from recipients of
federal funds, we hold, do not suffice
to render the dues recipient subject to
modem, Internet will not do e-mail
or the World Wide Web.
What it will do. its backers hope,
is spark a generation of innovations,
what e-mail and the Web were to the
current Net. to dazzle in the 21st
century. "We’re just about to see
another explosion of interesting
technology,” promised David Farber,
a University of Pennsylvania
professor of computer science and a
member of the advisory board for
Internet 2, Tuesday.
Penn is one of 140 universities
lined up to connect to Internel2,
which is based on a continentwide,
10,000-mile fiber-optic cable loop
dedicated to the project for three years
by Qwest Communications
International Inc. of Denver. The
among teams. That led to building
strategies. The freshmen talked about
holding back on a stylized plastic,
figuring it might be valuable to one
of the other teams.
Walk into the
Their assignment was to build a
“city of the future” from the blocks.
These cities would reflect their
knowledge of urban design and
architecture, along with details of
serving city residents through roads,
parks and other support structures.
The teams were free to plan in
advance, but that had limited strategy.
They didn’t know what pieces they
would have until the LEGOs were
dumped out of boxes. "We basically
had to figure out what we had and go
from there,” said Michele Price, a
senior and member of the chemical
engineering team.
As they began work Sunday, the
chemical engineers group started
working on a fusion plant to power
the city and on a tower and building
that would serve as their city
centerpiece. Back at the freshman
table, Erica von Shenk and Ryan
Steinbock were working on a space
National Campus News
ballplayers pass five eell blocks each
with 550 inmates on their left and the
institutional eomplex where prisoners
make clothing and shoes on their
right. A bulletin board maintained by
the Graterford Lifers advertises Girl
Scout cookies.
"Yeah, they're doing 'Romeo and
Juliet,’ too,” one of the players jokes.
A stocky inmate with a shaved head
and a fixed scowl veers toward them
and mutters: "Rookies." "Yo, big
fella, these boys can dunk," a
graybeard tells Dan Mesher, at 6-foot
-5 the tallest bible-school player.
"Yeah?" the lean 20-year-old from
Downington says softly. "We can
dunk, too.”
At the fieldhouse, a green-and
white box made of cinder blocks, the
inmates warm up in white-and-green
uniforms branded with the letters
S.C.I.G. They have a few years and a
lot of bulk on the collegians, who
wear green, numbered uniforms
borrowed from the prison. It can’t
make any of the bible-college men
feel more confident to overhear
the Graterford coaeh say that he’s
missing two of his best players,
having thrown them off the team for
brawling during their last prison
league game against the team from
Camp Hill.
“There are no choirboys," says
Graterford coach Joe Rogers, 30, who
played guard for the Slate University
to expand scope of Title IX
Title IX," Justice Ruth Bader
Ginsburg wrote for the court. "At
most, the association's receipt of dues
demonstrates that it indirectly benefits
from the federal assistance afforded
its members. This showing, without
more, is insufficient to trigger Title
IX coverage," she wrote.
NCAA President Cedric W.
Dempsey said the organization, which
has 1,200 member schools, was
pleased with the ruling. He noted that
the NCAA has worked to comply with
Title IX voluntarily.
The case came about alter Smith
said the NCAA discriminated against
her by denying her permission to play
college volleyball when she was in
graduate school. Smith had played
volleyball as an undergraduate at St.
Bonaventure University and then
cable, or backbone, has been dubbed
Abilene, after the Kansas town that
served as a cattle transit point for the
Old West.
"It’s the new frontier of
networking,” said Greg Wood,
spokesman for the University
Corporation for Advanced Internet
Development, a Washington-based
group coordinating the roll-out of
Internet 2. Government agencies,
telecommunications and cable
companies, and others in the private
sector have been racing to set up
newer, faster Internet services, so
Internet 2 is not the first revision of
cyberspace to hit the ether. But with
a dala-transfer speed of 2.5 gigabits
per second on the Abilene backbone,
it is one of the fastest.
for class
port. That was in contrast to a draw
bridge apparatus that looked
like it belonged to an old castle moat.
If this LEGO competition
somewhat resembles kids play, there’s
a good reason. One of the major
efforts of the USC College of
Engineering these days is to try to
reach students all the way down to
first grade and help bring them along
as engineers. One of the goals is to
help supply the slate’s need of a
creative force of scientists.
To hear Dean Craig Rogers tell it,
every young kid is an engineer until
somebody steers them elsewhere. If
you don’t believe that, he said, watch
children play with blocks, build roads
in the sand and yes, make model
cities. Rogers said it is a mistake to
wait until students are nearly out of
high school and then rush them with
opportunities in engineering.
“Engineering is all about problem
solving and creative thinking,”
Rogers said. “That starts as kids and
never stops.”
of New York at Utica before being
hired to work at the prison. “There’s
a lot of athleticism and a lack of real
fundamentals. A lot of (these) people
never played under a whistle. They’d
get a game on the corner and just play
call your own fouls and what have
The game starts sloppily. There’s no
scoring or drama until Steve
Melniczak, 18, a freshman from
Northeast Philadelphia, drives to his
right, then executes a silky crossover
dribble that freezes his defender and
sucks the air out of the balcony. The
inmates start hooting. From the bench,
a bible-school teammate yells, "Way
to go, Skippy!” And that’s all the
Greek chorus needs. “Skippy ...”
“Skippy ...”
But when Melniczak fakes out a
second defender and flows to the
hoop, the catcalls turn to cheers. “Got
game!” someone pronounces. The
Eagles are fluid lots of ball
movement, crisp pick and rolls. Their
long-distance shots fall easily at first,
just net.
But Graterford rules the boards, and
the collegians have little success
working the ball inside for easy
baskets.
The visitors are up, 21-19, at one
point, but when their three-point
attempts start to miss, Graterford
grabs the lead and doesn't let up. A
close game not in the cards, the
sought to play during her postgraduate
years at Hofslra University and the
University of Pittsburgh.
In denying her eligibility, the NCAA
pointed to a rule that allows graduate
students to participate in athletics only
at the institution that awarded the
undergraduate degree. Smith sued,
alleging the NCAA granted waivers
from eligibility restrictions to male
athletes more often than it did to
females.
A lower eourt dismissed her claim,
ruling that she had not shown the
NCAA was subject to Title IX. But a
federal appeals court reversed the
ruling, holding that Smith could
pursue her lawsuit simply showing the
NCAA got money from institutions
that receive federal funds. The
decision is not a complete victory for
For example, the 4-year-old
government-sponsored very-high
performance Backbone Network
Service, or vBNS, already connects
82 university campuses, and was state
of the art for its time. But it runs
mostly at about a quarter of the speed
of Internet 2.
Now, vBNS is being upgraded, and
even has its own connection to
Internet 2, said Rick Wilder, director
of advanced Internet technology for
MCI World Com, which holds the
government contract to run vBNS
through 2000. Even the academics
involved are not sure about what
Internet 2 will be used for. “If I knew,”
said Farber, "I'd be out founding a
company, right?”
In the hands of bright students, he
Radical Feminist professor
ordered to teach men
College Press Exchange
BOSTON (CPX) - Boston College
Professor Mary Daly, who for 25 years
has been teaching women-only
classes, has been ordered to open up
her courses to men, too.
Faced with the threat of lawsuit,
college officials told Daly in
December that she needed to allow
men into her courses on advanced
feminist theory. They’ve had similar
talks with the self-described
“positively revolting hag” in the past.
The college reprimanded her in 1974
and 1989 for her women-only stance,
but the issue died down each time,
school officials said.
However, the latest round of
complaints appeared headed to court,
prompting school officials to insist
that Daly change her ways because
they don’t give the school a “legal leg
to stand on,” a school spokesman said.
Daly, who has taken a leave of
absence, has refused and gone public
hungry crowd looks tor other sport.
The home team steals the ball but
blows a three-on-none break each of
the three missing easy shots.
The balcony erupts in lusty boos.
“It’s always that way,” Rogers says.
“All around the state system, they
root for the other team. I don’t know
if it’s jealousy or just the general
negativity.”
Four minutes into the second half,
the inmates have scored 10
unanswered points when the game
gets ugly. Tim Stone, 20, of Billings,
Mont., sets to take a charge and is
bulled over. He’s called for the foul,
and his coach fumes. ,”Why don’t the
calls come this way?” the coach asks.
Sympathy pours from upstairs.
"They don’t listen!” an inmate
says. "They don't know nothing
about the game!” Seconds later, Billy
Manning, 22, of Newport News, Va.,
is hammered and collapses to his
knees under the basket. This time, the
refs call it.
And after a scramble for a rebound.
Judge rushes off the court, his eyes
tearing, his nose squirting blood. He
caught a teammate’s shoulder. “Back
next week?” someone taunts, as the
inmates crowd the railing. With five
minutes to go, the Graterford coach
pulls starter Richard Smith. "They’re
relying too much on three-pointers,”
says Smith, whose court used to be
the Richard Allen Homes in North
the NCAA, however, because the
justices refused to address other
arguments about why the
organization should be subject to Title
IX. The justices said those arguments
must first be fully discussed in lower
courts.
Smith also maintains that she
should be allowed to sue because the
NCAA gets federal money through
the National Youth Sports Program
and because the NCAA has
controlling authority over college
athletics. Marcia Greenberger, co
president of the National Women’s
Law Center, said Tuesday she was
heartened by the court’s decision
because it provided "a road map of
how the NCAA ultimately will be
held accountable under the civil rights
laws.”
said, “they’ll figure out things that
people like to do, and they'll go out
and start companies.” For
Wednesday’s introduction of
Internet 2, backers held a
demonstration inside Washington’s
Union Station, where they showed
the network being used for broadcast
quaiity video and heavy-duty remote
computations.
The Internet began as a research
tool for government and academia,
and so it is natural that the next
generation Internet emerge from the
same fertile soil, said Guy Aimes,
chief engineer for Internet 2. He
predicted uses for the network
ranging from high-quality
videoconferencing to telemedicine,
and remote operation of telescopes
with her protest. She defends her
single-sex classroom, insisting that it
allows women to feel freer to “really
talk and explore ideas.” Daly is quick
to add that she’s willing to work with
men on an individual basis and offer
them the same curriculum that she
gives to her female students. She
simply asks that men stay out of her
classrooms.
Daly’s reasoning and her policy
upset Senior Duane Naquin and Junior
Matthew Glazer. Both students
complained. Naquin, backed by the
Center for individual Rights, a public
interest law firm, threatened to sue the
college if he wasn’t admitted.
The college has offered Daly, who
is 70 and the author of seven books,
including The Church and the Second
Sex and Gyn/Ecology: the Metaethics
of Radical Feminism, early
retirement. She has refused the initial
proposal, saying that she will retire
when she can do so at her own
discretion.
Philadelphia.
Smith, 28, made the Graterford
team after arriving in December
1993, having been convicted of the
late-night fatal shooting of a 23-year
old neighbor. Basketball takes up
most of his free time, he says. He
doesn’t get much opportunity to excel
before people not in the system. The
buzzer sounds as he talks. The final
score: 89-61, Graterford.
The stands clear quickly, and the
home team is hustled off, leaving the
bible-coliege players time only for
handshakes. As they make the long
walk back, the halls are busier than
before. Prisoners walk shoulder to
shoulder with them and ask about the
game.“ What’s wrong with y’all?”
wonders a man in the parking lot.
Two players jostle over who’s
riding shotgun, prompting coach
Martindell to chide: “Violence never
solved anything.” It’s quiet on the
way home after pleas for a Wawa stop
solved anything.” It’s quiet on the
way home after pleas for a Wawa stop
and crab legs go unanswered. Most
of the players have to-study.
Back inside, meanwhile, Smith is
no longer No. 20, the starting guard
with the steady game. He’s state
prisoner CF4331, working off 17-1/
2 to 45 years for third-degree murder.
He has 45 minutes to shower before
the guards lock him in for another
night.
"I think people in this country
would be very taken aback if they had
any idea that the NCAA, which has
such control over intercollegiate
athletics, is making an argument that
it is immune from the civil rights laws
and can operate these athletic
educational programs
discriminatory way," she said.
Greenberger noted that those issues
have been raised in other cases,
including a race discrimination
lawsuit, now pending against the
NCAA. “It's just a matter of time until
coverage of the NCAA by the civil
rights statutes is beyond dispute,"
Greenberger said.
But Dempsey said {he NCAA was
confident the lower courts will rule
in the NCAA's favor on the other
issues, as well.
in Hawaii
But that view has drawn some
criticism. Tony Rutkowski, director
of the Center for Next Generation
Internet, an industry association, said
he sees a place lor new networks such
as Internet 2 to serve academia, “but
the notion that they are leading the
way, as with the original Internet in
the 1980 s, is clearly out of sync with
reality.”
The private sector is leading the
way by “just having to meet the
demands of customers,” Rutkowski
said.
Syracuse announces plan
to ban smoking in all
dorm rooms
;e Press Exchange
SYRACUSE, N.Y. (CPX) - Some
students at Syracuse University are
fired up about the school’s decision
to ban smoking in all dormitory rooms
in 2000. Currently, students are
allowed to smoke in their rooms with
their roommate’s consent.
The ban stemmed primarily from
concerns about the effects of second
hand smoke and the damage students
do to their health when they smoke,
school officials said.
Student government leaders agree
that smoking is a community health
issue, but they are concerned that
university administrators approved
the ban without input from students.
As a result, the campus’ student
government association has asked
school officials to revisit the issue.
A study conducted in November by
researchers at Harvard University
reported that smoking is on the rise
among college students. Nearly 30
percent of them are everyday
smokers, the study found. Among
other things, it recommended that
schools increase the number of
smoke-free areas on campus and ban
smoking in dorm rooms.