Ben Kundman, Editorial Page Editor The Behrend Beacon The Behrend Beacon published weekly bv the students nj Penn State l.rie, the Behrend ( alleye News Editor Erin McCarty Asst. News Editor Kevin Fallon Sports Editor Mike Hello Asst. Sports Editor Kate Levdan.sky Petrikis Editorial Page Editor Hen Kundman Features Editor Karl Henaeci Arts & Entertainment Editor Jeanine Noce Wire Service Editor Guv Rcschetuhiiler f\ m the behrend Beacon •Postal Information* The Beacon is published weekly by the students of Penn State Erie, the Behrend College: First Floor, The .1. Elmer Reed Union Building, Station Road, Erie, PA 16563 The Beacon can be reached by calling (814) 898-6488 or (814) 898-6019 (F AX). ISSN 1071-9288. The View From the Lighthouse Martin Luther King: inspiration to all of us This week, we celebrate the life of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr.: a preach scholar, an activist, and an inspiration fought an unjust system with well-chi words, and a nation listened. Many h him, some hated him, but none couli nore his compelling message. He wa extraordinary person who made an extr dinary impact. We see the fruits of hi: tient labors as we walk the halls of campus each day, enveloped in the ri< diversity of America, diversity that King helped the populace to appreci ate. And yet he was also an ordinary person. A person who grew up in a middle class family and who struggled to fit in. A person who got angry. A person who fell in love. A person with doubts and insecurities. A person with faults. An ordinary person who carved out his extraordinary destiny through the choices he made. A per son not so very different from any student here at Behrend. That knowledge is both inspiring and humbling, for it compels us to realize that we, too, are capable of greatness, yet it reminds us that we may not be making the most of the opportunities granted to us. We need not graduate from college at the age of 19, speak to crowds of thousands, or turn the tide of American society in order to walk the path that King walked. We can each follow King’s ex ample by noticing situations in which change is needed and rising to the challenge in a positive, productive manner. A generation stands between King and us, and we have be come painfully aware that our world is not as idyllic as we had once imagined. We live in a world of shattered dreams and crushed hopes. And yet, we are the members of a generation poised to make our mark upon the world, to leave it a better place than it was when we arrived. We rise together from the ashes of hatred as we never could have before King’s day. We stand on the edge of a new horizon, gazing into the distance at the Promised Land that King helped us to envision. And so as we celebrate Dr. King, we celebrate the potential within ourselves. We seek to awaken the young heart that beats fiercely in the face of tribulation, striving for triumph and achieving it. The torch of freedom has passed into our hands, and we carry it onward to a brighter day when King’s dream can at last be realized. His legacy lives on. Editor-in-Chief Robert Wynne Managing Editor Rebecca Wcindorf Public Relations Manager Professional Publication Mgr. Dave Richards Advisor Mr. John Kerwin 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. Monday for inclusion in Staff Photographer Jeff Hankey Advertising Managers Libbie Johnson Melissa Powell Kelly Walsh Distribution Manager Erie Kiser Office Manager Jason Alwaril Technical Support l)oug Hiinerworth Health Page Editor Sarah Orr Humor Page Editor Hen Kundman “Professionalism with a Personality” •Letter Policy* that week’s issue gji; y jj y Friday, January 18, 2002 it iiilir Let’s face it: The mass media is en- gaging in a smear campaign against pretzels. Ever since President Bush had that little run-in with the pretzel while watching football, news contains anti-pretzel overtones. All are blam ing pretzels for conspiring to take out the president and other members of his administration. The other day I saw Secretary of Defense Donald JftjimsfekL'On Fox News claiming 'that ths military is planning strategic bombings of pret zel factories suspected to be in league with the rogue pretzel who was respon sible for the Bush incident. Come on now people, that is ridiculous! Where will this stop? Will it con tinue until all pretzels have been wiped from the snacking menu of people ev erywhere? When is enough enough? I speak for all pretzels when 1 say that pretzels are good and honest Put your mouth to good use J Undressed from gripe about something. For . j example (this is a purely the neck up hypothetical situation) 1 am r* i nr . j „ given (or voted) the privilege Becky to head a committee in a s . ~~u~ particular organization. All H right, that’s cool. But my ■ When committee members are slackers. Big ■ time. One even gets high every day of the week and forgets to schedule his classes by the first week of school. They all conveniently forget meeting times, assignments, and commitments to the organization. What do I do? Here’s where the privilege thing kicks in. In a purely professional way, I go to the president of an organization and I gripe. I tell the president that I have a lazy-ass, sorry excuse for a committee and demand that a) I get a new committee or b) that the president tells me what to do about it. If the president tells me to deal with it, that’s fine. I get what I get to work you look at all the crap that every single one of us has to go through (and of course, it’s all different for everyone,) you wonder how anyone can simply live. Yeah, we all have our jobs that suck. We all have that one class in which the professor’s voice is torture, like a drill between the eyes. And there’s always someone’s opinion to gripe about. You know you’ve said the following at one time or another: “What does she/he know about that, anyway?” But griping, a close cousin of freedom of speech, is a privilege. Not a right. You earn your privilege to The grass is always greener (unless you’re in turf management) J University Park. While it is Amanda PrischaK™ s °™,f pplican, . s are not initially accepted to ed i lora ! i (>'! urn n sst Main Campus are relegated to Upon branch campuses, it is not true that branch campuses are simply refuges ™ for University Park rejects. Rather, I have discovered that most students willingly choose to attend a branch campus because of a certain major offered or the proximity to home. But the most common reason to forgo Main Campus that I have encountered has certainly been the size factor. There is no getting around it; Main Campus is huge. As the fourth largest university in the country, it is easy to feel overwhelmed by the almost entirely student population in State College. I will never forget walking into my 360-person psychology class the first day. It is a strange feeling to be a part of a class containing more than half the number of the people in arriving at Penn State Behrend, I have quickly become aware of a certain mindset concerning Main Campus. It seems that Behrend students perceive the University Park campus as being more academically challenging and offering a more fulfilling social agenda than Behrend and the other respective branch campuses across the state. As a recent transfer from the venerated University Park, I feel a need to expose what I view as the false impressions many students have of our mother campus in central Pennsylvania. It seems to me that many students at Behrend see themselves as academically inferior to students at .111..'"' .... snacks. They are low fat and delicious. Just because one bad pretzel had to go and choke the leader of the free world (obviously an Al Qaeda pretzel) all pret zels are given a bum rap. As military tribunals are set up to prosecute pretzels, as pretzels are be ing sent to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as people everywhere look on pretzels with suspicion* anger, and hatred, I say , enough., ftetfeds (fee an integral part of the America® snacking community. They have been tosur living rooms for years. Why has the American public and the American media singled pret zels out? Why are pretzels suddenly “the bad guy snack?” I’d sure like to know. Please help the cause and buy some pretzels. Do not let this low fat and tasty snack go by the way side. Let us make pretzels our number one snack. - Guy Reschenthaler Every week, two editors from the staff will deba are encouraged to email suggestions for the W / W& -rue V recession Ji Hot Debat The Pretzel: eAVJ' I t 'riend or Foe? I’m sure everyone will take the side of the Pretzel and claim it was an innocent ac cident. Everyone thinks they’re so soft and chewy (or in some cases crunchy and ideal for party mix.) Make no mistake. These le thal contraptions of deadly dough are ev erywhere. And it’s got to stop. I suppose you don’t think much of it when you buy a soft pretzel at Bruno’s and coincidence? You’re fooling yourself. Many of you will say this pretzel was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. I don’t claim to know all the details. Maybe it was aTaliban Pretzel. Maybe it was sent by Dick Cheney from an “undis closed location.” Maybe it was a pretzel from Florida. I don’t know. But whatever the case, it better have a pretty good story. The fact is that soft pretzels also make ex cellent sandwiches. Perhaps, then, this rebel pretzel, tired of his race being digested by i te a topic that is hot. Students, faculty and staff hot topic. Send ideas to behrcoll2@aol.com I am using this example not because of lazy committees (all the people in committees I’ve served on have been good, hardworking and honest), but because there is a certain portion of this fine college community that kicks back and bitches about what others do. I’m not talking about those who have written a letter to the editor; they’ve earned their right to gripe. Most of the time, the authors of those letters are heads of organizations on campus and take advantage of their privilege to write to the paper. That is something I like to see in our mailbox. However, you got something to say about the job someone’s doing? You think there’s something missing on campus? GET OFF YOUR BUTT AND DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. Anyone who’s ever gotten involved in anything had a desire to make a difference or fix something that’s your high school while a teacher with a microphone dictates notes to you. Resist believing that if you sit in front you do not notice the hundreds of others you share the class with. You do. Because of University Park’s small city population, I feel that Behrend is the more academically rigorous school. This semester, class attendance is not as much of a choice as it was the previous semester. Attendance, as well as participation, is a significant the grade for most of my classes. No longer can I attend class only on test days or sit in the middle of a large mass of students while I aimlessly decorate my planner. What amuses me most is that students perceive Main Campus as a mecca of fun and entertainment. Student life there revolves around the same things - frats, apartment parties, the Week behrco!l2 @ aol.com r fjt ~ - - .ifTli Mli-H yPp-pa » _ t us “big people” decided to go on a suicii mission to assassinate the President. “But Tony,” you might say, “pretzels aren’t animals, they are baked goods.” Oh the government would really like you tc think that. But they hide things from us. Like the great Pretzel War of ’52. I’m not sup posed to be telling you any of this. Then was a riot of Pretzel attacks, and the gov ' to dispatch secret agents to take m Yes, for an extended period ol were known for stuffing dougt id of donuts. Oh, they stayec For a while. But now they’re back, wilt a vengeance. Bush was lucky to survive. I’ll admit pretzels aren’t all bad. We car torture them by removing their salt, and ther put it on Bin Laden when we shave his hide However, I’m sure that if for some reasor you are pro-pretzel, my thoughts will no change yours. I’ll let you get back to youi meal. Just be sure to get a Sub. - Tony DiPlacido wrong. I didn’t join the paper because I want my resume to look! great; I joined because there was a need. I didn’t volunteer to run for the; APO president position because I was! having a power trip; I did it because t believed that the brothers have huge; potential. I don’t tell the cashiers at! Wegman’s to stay on task because f have an ego; I do it because it improves; overall performance for the front end. The flip side to this, Behrend, is not to complain at all. And what would we have? I’d be a transfer student. This place would get shot to hell and no one would care about it. You need complainants to get things going, so here’s what I’ll tell you: You got gripes? You’ve got the answers. Do something about it. Weindorf’s column appears every three weeks. movies, and sitting around with friends. The difference? More frats, more apartments, but the same cheap beer. My report may seem negative, but do not let it have much impact on your decision to attend Main Campus. It is a great place to go for graduate research or if you are considering a rare major such as turfgrass science. And while I am certainly happy to escape the anonymity of a large university, I understand that not everyone welcomes as much attention as I do in the classroom and just about everywhere else. Just remember not to act as surprised when you encounter those of us who found the glory of Old State not to be so great. Prischak’s column appears every three weeks. Page yil
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers