THE BEHREND BEACON The Behrend Beacon published weekly by the students of Penn State Erie, The Behrend College News Editor Shannon Wither Features Editor Deanna svmmki Wire Services Editor Au,t, , ela Rush Advertising Managers Erie Carey Smith Photo Editor Ji 'Bev Miller Kevin Bruner (avvitant) Office Manager Brad Wierrel Postal Information: The Beacon is 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 he reached by calling (814) 898-6488 or (814) 898-6019 (FAX). ISSN 1071-9288. A view Rooting for the hometeam! When was the last time that you went to a sporting event here at Be hrend? Did you know that the AI\ACC women's soccer championships are this weekend? Do you plan on attend ing'? We certainly hope that the an swer is yes. Sporting events on campus are never usually highly attended, hut they should he. Look at the amount of people that attend the Penn State games at University Park. Why don't we have that type of turnout here. Or something even remotely close? I'm sure that we love our Behrend teams as much as UP loves the football team. Let's get out there and root for our teams. itchin' b Gavel talk and monkey business Bang, Bang, Bang... attention ev erybody, I now bring this Bitch to order. Could somebody please ex plain to me the purpose of SGA? I think that I've missed the point. If you have been an avid reader of the Beacon, you might have noticed that there has been very little coverage of the Student Governement Associa tion in the paper this year. Anyone wonder why? Well to keep this ex planation as short as possible, they do nothing. I hate to say this becasue I am a member, and I see SGA as a worthwhile organization, but they don't do much for the student body at large. How many or you even know when the meetings arc, where they are held, that they are open to the public, or what goes on at these meet ing? I am willing to bet, that unless you are a member, or are friends with someone who is, you really have no idea, and you don't really care. The student body at this school does not give a rat's ass about their SGA. Hell, the people who get elected to SGA don't even care. Last year, so few people ran for SGA Senator, that ev eryone who ran was elected, and there were still two seats left unfilled. Then this year, SGA held a special election at the beginning of the year to fill those seats. Then what hap pens? SGA Senators stop showing up for meetings. At last week's meet ing, SGA had to appoint two new people to SGA to fill seats left vacent by people who just stopped showing up. And within the coming weeks it looks like even more seats are going to open up. It's nice to see that people really want to serve on SGA. Well, lets analyze this. What was SGA's big issue for the beginning of Editor-in-Chief Jaw') Smile ' Managing Editor Michael Frail le‘ Ad visors Robert Speel it»! O'Loughlin 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 hehrcoll2@aol.com. Letters must he received no later than spm Tuesday for inclusion in that week's issue. rom the li The Wonnm's Soccer team has their championship game this Sunday. We hope that everyone here on campus can pull together and create a cheer ing section to help lead the lady lions km victory! 1111ke Mike Frawle the year. Should the executive board get stipends? Wow, now that's some thing that really affects the entire stu dent body. Boy, arguing about how much we should pay the President to d0....uh, what does the President do, besides banging that damn gavel (sorry, but that damn thing really pisses me off, maybe we can get one of those plastic, squeaky gavels, that would he cool)? Oh well, there's an other question for the ages. SCA needs to reach out to the stu dent body that they are supposed to represent. No one knows and no one cares about SGA, and it shouldn't he that way. SGA has the potential to have a great deal of power on cam pus. If students are upset about some thing going on at the campus then they should go to SGA, and SGA should he doing something about it. As of right now SGA meetings are a joke, people coming in late, leaving early, no one knowing how a meeting is sup posed to he run. Sometimes I am embarrassed to he a member of SGA, but I was elected and I will serve out my term. Who knows, maybe next year Bongo the three legged monkey will run for President. Bananas for everyone! ehrcoll2@aol.co Editorial Page Editor Kane Gu lley r Sports Editors Mau Wierrel Craig Hazelwood lassivano Calendar Page Editor Kim lurk Business Manager Krictine Harakal Associate Editor Liz Haves Distribution Manager JOlAbilii hthouse Send all letters to the editor to: EDITORIAL A little bit o Call me Katie Don't get me wrong, I think that being a teacher or a nurse could he a good occupation if that is what you really want to do for the rest of your life. Personally for me, journalism is my future (preferably broadcast journalism). I am forever grateful to the women that have gone before me and pressed on into the cruel, cruel world of "The Boys' Club". The 1964 Civil Rights Act and a 1971 Federal Communications Commission ruling mandated equal employment regardless of gender. Women started moving into newsrooms. Think the Mary Tyler Moore Show—Mary Richards working with her boss Lou Grant and the self-centered Ted Baxter. The show started in 1971 and ran until 1977. Mary Richards, an independent, professional woman of 30 that lived in a pretty nice apartment in the city of Minneapolis, was the associate producer of The Evening News. Women could look to Mary as a role model for their time. Women were moving into the newsrooms, hut still treated a second For what it's worth Who will lead our nation? Well, that certain time of year has arrived upon us once again, and the smell, some of you would call it a stench, is in the air. All of you politi cal junkies (like myself) know exactly what I am talking about. It's campaign 2000 time, and by looking at the ani mosity that has been built up between Congress and the White House over these last few years, it looks like this will be one of the most hitter fought campaigns that will have taken place in recent history. Ever since the tag team of Bill "1 never inhaled" and Hillary "Don't call me a femi-nazi" Clinton (she never really said that) defeated the Republi cans and took over the White House in '93, things certainly haven't been the same in our nation's capital. Mr. Clinton, who has privately declared war on the Republicans who im peached him, is determined not to let them get any upper-hand and is even more determined to establish some sort of positive legacy, which seems quite tarnished by his own hands and as of now stands to he a stained blue Putting an end to the transgender issue Without commenting directly on the recent letters by Misters Darling and Morelli, I would add the following information to the discussion: 1.) Since 1991, Penn State has had a nondiscrimination clause that includes sex and sexual orientation; 2.) The Office of the Vice Provost for Educational Equity, a university-wide entity, funds and maintains a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Re Behrend needs more bandwidth! Have you ever tried to load a web page, only to have it time out because it to too long to load? Are you tired of the World Wide Wait? In recent Bea con articles about the information tech nology fee, I have noticed that the is sue of bandwidth, or how much infor mation our connection to University Park and the Internet can handle was conspicuously absent. Last year we spent $555,000 and this year we are expected to pay approximately $625,000 for computers, modems, and a network that often seems to go no where slow! This year the SGA formed a com mittee to look into how the tee is spent. While this committee is still looking for ways to improve computing re sources, it has generally found that Behrend is providing quite a bit, on campus. However, all these resources are dependent on our connection to University Park when students attempt OCTOBER 29, 1999 class citizens. Whv? Were men afraid that women could actually conduct an intelligent interview with some of Washington's top political professionals? Apparently. Barbara Walters told Mary Murphy of TV Guide, "When I was a Today reporter (1964-76),1 , h0w hostl Frank McGee went to the president of NBC and said that if there were any interviews coming out of Washington, the so called hard-news interview, I could not participate until he asked the first three questions. And they agreed." In 1985, women correspondents at ABC complained to Roone Arledge, the network news chief, about the lack The Republicans in Congress, who for sonic reason seem to be lacking some solid leadership, have seem ingly given up in trying to get an edge on Clinton, and instead have focused on the upcoming elections. In the contentious fight for the highest office in our land, we have Al Gore, our vice-president; Bill Bra dley, who is a former U.S. Senator: and George W. Bush, the current gov ernor of Texas and son of the former President, who will all he battling it out to regain control of the White House. Although Mr. Gore is our sit Letters to the Editor: source Room. Although the office is located at University park, its re sources are available to all Penn State faculty. staff, and students; many of its resources can be accessed via the web at http://www.lions.psu.eduilght: 3.) This same Office funds a half-time staff person with the title of Coordi nator of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Equity. One of the Coordinator's planned efforts this year is to produce a resource notebook to use Netscape, Email, or any Internet program. Behrend has 96 modems for staff and commuters to dial in on, 350 computers on campus, and another 800 or so connected in the dorms all going out to the rest of Penn State and the Internet over...two T- I 's. A T-1 is a leased line that transmits data at 1.544 Megabits per second, or roughly the equivalent of 24 good modem con nections. If even half of these 1250 computers that could be connected were online at once, it would leave us with about sKbps per person or less thanl/10th of what most modems could handle. So what does all this mean to the average student? It means that we are all competing for very limited network resources anywhere outside of the campus network. It leaves us all wait ing a very long time to get the infor mation our computer requests. If you've ever tried to do research on the Kool-aid and milk of women on the evening news, according to the article "How women took over the news" by Mary Murphy of TV Guide. In the next few years, all the networks were paying more notice and assigning women to higher profile heats. Walters has conic a long way since then. She helped launch the TV show The View, a morning talk show for women. In September, when Hugh Downs departed from the Friday 20/ 20, she became the show's sole anchor. She is certainly not a second class citizen anymore. I am sure she can handle asking those first three questions herself, Frank Mcgee. Katie Couric interviewed Michael Shoels, a father whose son was killed in the shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. During the interview, Shoels was over wrought with grief, and Couric did something that no male anchor would ever do—she reached over and held his hand. ( Could you really see Peter Jennings doing that?) This style of news reporting is called journalism with empathy. ting vice president, it looks like he will now have to light hard for the Demo cratic nomination because Mr. Brad ley has come out of nowhere to give Gore a good scare. But even the facts that Bradley has been given positive press coverage and Gore still has to somehow find a way to distance himself from all of Bill's scandals, Gore will still prob ably defeat Bradley for the Demo cratic nomination. But then that just might be when Gore's skill and luck will run out. He will then have to face George W. Bush, the son of the former president who Clinton defeated in '92. Despite the fact that the only political office he has ever held is governor of Texas, despite the rumors about his wild past, and despite the fact that most people don't even really know who he is, the public and Republicans in Congress have virtually thrust him into the spotlight, giving him the re sponsibility of winning back the White House after eight long years. According to some friends of mine in Texas, the people there love him and on Transgender issues and concerns; 4.) Flyers advertising Trigon events are, in direct violation of university policy, routinely torn down and de faced. If any manage to remain on the walls, it is primarily due to the tenac ity and dedication of the students members; 5.) Penn State does not simply "toler ate" or even "accept" the diversity of its faculty, staff, and students; rather, it actively seeks to foster diversity. Internet and waited minutes for websites to load, our lack of bandwidth is the reason why. Without getting too philosophical on the subject of computers, I look at the Internet as information in its purest form. I truly believe that the Internet, and the information made available through it is the single greatest advance to learning & knowledge since the in vention of writing. Today we have in stant access to nearly all information accumulated by the human race over thousands of years. To me, limiting our access to this information goes against our entire purpose for being here. The question then is what to do about this. The university knows that it has a problem and is looking to add a third T I in an attempt to alleviate the net work congestion, but this is basically just a "finger in the dike." To solve the problem, the university needs to up grade to a fractional T 3. A Full T 3 It's our nature as women to he compassionate and a have a sense of humanitarianism. These qualities are prominent in how we conduct ourselves in our interviews and in our reporting. These qualities do not— in any way—hold us hack. With 60 percent of the viewing audience of all network news shows now made of women, what was once considered soft news is now hard news. My dream is to one day be the lead anchor on the Evening News on NBC. I want to he ready to take over for Tom Brokaw when he is ready to retire (hint, hint Tom). Katie Couric, Barbara Walters, Jane Pauley, Cokie Roberts, Claire Shipman, Christiane Amanpour and the numerous other women that have gone before me, have knocked down the wall and helped build an empire of journalism that I will one day he apart of. Move over Tom Brokaw. Shannon Weber is taking over and I will "make it after all" in "The Boys' Club." said that he has a great policy record and he has done wonderful things for the people of Texas. However, being governor of Texas is a far cry from being President of the United States, and he must he prepared to translate the success he has had in Texas to success in D.C., where the waters are full of sharks. The Republicans are ready for a winner, and they have declared Bush their man. If he does not succeed, then their hopes for the White House are doomed. My prediction: Bush defeats Gore. No matter if you're a Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal, or maybe just don't give a hoot about politics, these upcoming elections can and will change the course of history. Both sides know what is at stake, and both want to he the party that leads the world into the twenty-first century. So if you're interested, get on hoard, join the fun, and vote. See, for example, President Spanier's recent "Framework for Fostering Di- \,ersity " As members of the Penn State corn munity, it is all of our responsibility to insure that no one is harassed or ridiculed on the basis of his/her iden tity, "chosen" or otherwise. Dr. John Champagne Assistant Professor of English carries about 45Mbps and would prob ably be overkill at this time. Fortu nately, most telcom providers have fractional T3's that would suit our needs perfectly and cost only slightly more than the multiple T 1 s. As the campus continues to grow towards 5000 students and as these students use the internet more and more, the present situation will get worse and worse. A fractional T 3 could be stepped up rela tively easily to meet increasing net work demand. If you look at the Internet as the world's largest library, then these two Ti's represent two tiny doors with all of us waiting in long lines to get in and out. To fully utilize this resource, we need to get the university to kaock out a wall and put in some bigger doors. Demian Blair 03, MKT/MIS PAGE 6
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