The State of The Beacon Address
A professor once said, "The Beacon is a
joke."
Nine students in that professor's class said,
"Her class is a joke."
What goes around comes around; I don't
know who said what first.
Two semesters have r
so marks the end of my'
far for the Behrend
And what a year it h,
Being the preside
student organization
one of the most rew,
experiences I've h
during my last thrt
years at Behrend.
probably be comini
back in the fall with
the same title, but I
need to stop first and reflect a bit on what has
helped make the Beacon a better student
newspaper, regardless of what any two-bit
professors have to say about it.
Thirty hours a week in perhaps the smallest
office space of any newspaper in Pennsylvania
is enough to make anyone go crazy. I didn't
go crazy, however. Not when I had the hardest
working group of people who bent over
backward each week to see that
"professionalism with a personality" was the
basis of each Beacon to hit the stands every
Friday. Since the Beacon seemed to ignite
Doyou want your voice to be heard?
elßecome a Beacon Editorialist'-next fall.
Send a 500 word sample editorial to:
behrcoll2@aolecom
0, 8 „ f 7 l .
Graduating college in 4 years is like leaving a party at 10:30 p.m.
Superfreak
Ben Kundman
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roIiSSE(
freshman who had a lot of growing up to
do. Now, five years and 5,000 beers later, I
am a lanky, not-so fresh faced, snot nosed
super senior about to graduate.
Summing up five years of your life in
1,000 words is pretty much impossible
unless it consists entirely of fragments such
as "drank a lot" and "ate crappy food." In
order to try and maximize the amount of
content within this editorial, I am going to
fall back on my old stand-by, the list, or more
specifically, a list of people and things that
have changed my life for the better in the
past five years.
Professors:
While in high school, only the "nerds"
have any sort of rapport with the teachers.
However, all of this changes once college is
The games we play at Mary Jo's Way
Attitude problem ourselves:
ot 4 Champ: Champ is our new
Paige Milespuppy. We really aren't sure what kind
Vaoaet of dog he is, but he's still pretty cool.
•
Initially, Katie and I liked to play the
"watch Champ run into things" game.
We would throw one of Champ's many
toys into the kitchen, towards the sliding
glass doors. Mind you, our kitchen floor
is surprisingly clean and slick. Champ
would slide head first into the sliding
glass door. After a week of this, he
gained some traction control. Jay didn't
like this game too much, and Katie and
I started feeling bad for hurting the dog.
Champ is a pretty wound-up puppy.
We often think he needs some sort of
doggy valium, or maybe just fixed, but
that would take all the fun away. Simply
stomping and growling at him will make
I'd like to start with a small complaint.
I think Mother Nature must have hit
menopause this year. Snow on April 22?
What a cruel joke. Take some damn
hormones.
And now, for the real editorial. Back
in December, I moved in with three
former Beaconians. (One left in
February, now it's down to me and two
former Beaconians). Living in a
townhouse can be quite fun; here's a
small portion of how we entertain
assed and
I started Penn
State Behrend in
the fall of 1997 a
lanky, fresh-faced,
snot nosed
some flames of controversy on campus this
past year, I would say my section editors and
I have done a pretty good job of doing what a
good newspaper is supposed to do - inform
its audience, state the facts, express feelings
and viewpoints about those facts, and lastly,
I would
on this be lying if I
said that the
Wynne Beacon was
some, this is the
premier college paper
of northwestern
Pennsylvania, period.
I would not, however, be lying if I said that
the Beacon has the poorest paid staff in
Northwestern Pa. A lot of other schools give
tuition breaks to their editors, and it's school
money. I was able to pay many members of
my staff this semester for their time and
dedication, but those funds come from
advertising revenue, money the Beacon could
and should be using towards buying better
equipment, and offering incentives for writers
to produce quality articles, instead of the 100-
word press releases that make it out of some
COMM class with an A- slapped on the top.
reached. Professors treat students as equals
and students treat professors as
people, not baby sitters. This
mutual respect helped me realize
the great impact on life that my
teachers and professors have had
To name a few (this list is by no
means complete) at Behrend who have been
particularly noteworthy:
Robert Michael. Mr. Michael taught my
first strength of materials class. This class is
probably the most fundamental engineering
class there is, and before I took it, I was
unsure of why I had entered engineering.
Mr. Michael made a seemingly dull class
interesting to all students by relating it to
real world problems, thereby making me
realize what engineers really do. Thanks,
Mr. Michael.
on me
Richard Englund. Anyone who has had
Mr. Englund before will definitely comment
on his enthusiasm. 210 W: Machine Design.
Sounds like a class you'd sleep through ever
single day, correct? Wrong. Mr. Englund's
unbelievable enthusiasm and bottomless bag
of topical stories made this class worth going
to and staying awake for every day. In
addition to 210 W, Mr. E is currently the glue
that holds the Super Mileage Vehicle team
With that aside, I would like to make known
some of the improvements to the Beacon that
my staff and I have implemented over the past
year.
I) Not only maintaining a budget, but a
budget surplus. When I took over the Beacon,
there were left-over bills and people to pay.
With the help of a great new ad staff and
business manager, I was able to pay off those
bills and pay everyone on my current staff, as
well as spend the SAF printing money wisely.
2) Going from just one Internet connection
in the office to having five. Thanks to SAF
and a little help from the Beacon's tech
support crew (Doug Butterworth), the Beacon
was able to utilize the computers to their
fullest extent.
to entertain!
every way
every week
But, unknown to
3) Deadlines! Having the paper ready to
go Thursday night by midnight was a year
long goal. The past few weeks we have met
that goal. That's an improvement from 2 or 3
a.m. Friday!
4) Successful adoption of supplement pages
to the Beacon (e.g. Humor page, Health page,
Tech page). According to the results of our
recent campus-wide Beacon readership
survey, everyone seemed to like the Humor
page for the most part, despite a few people
who had no sense of what the word "funny"
meant. Come on, it's a college paper! We
made sure that nothing in the paper was more
vulgar than one would watch on prime-time
together. Thanks, Mr. Englund
straight semesters in a row:
Thermodynamics, Heat Transfer, and
Hydraulics.
Thermodynamics was the first class he
ever taught in his life, and, admittedly, his
teaching was a little rough. However, in the
ensuing semesters, I have watched him
mature into a great teacher who truly cares
about his students and the subject matter.
Briz's greatest attribute is his enthusiasm
about teaching and his desire to constantly
improve. Thanks, Briz.
Dave Johnson. ANSYS would quite
possibly be my least favorite computer
program on the planet if it weren't for Mr.
Johnson. In fact, I now feel quite comfortable
with it and look forward to using it in
industry.
Mr. Johnson never hesitated to stop class
for one students' question, would always
take five, 10, or 30 minutes of his office time
for a student's questions or problems no
matter how busy he was, and was an amazing
faculty advisor for our A.S.M.E. student
section. Thanks, Mr. Johnson.
Of course, there are many more, but in the
interest of brevity I would like to say thanks
him run in circles around the house. He
often goes so fast that he loses all control
and ends up bouncing off the futon.
Again, we take guilty pleasure in his
momentary pain. I believe it's called
Schadenfreude.
Television: We have nights that we
schedule everything around what's on
TV. Our new favorite is "The
Osbournes." My family was pretty
dysfunctional, but these guys have to be
the epitome of screwed-up. We tried
putting the television on closed
captioning to understand what Ozzy was
saying, but it didn't work. I guess even
MTV doesn't get it. Who knew a family
strung out on weed could be so funny?
Katie and I have both been avid "Real
World" watchers for years. Lately, Katie
has managed to get Jay into it too. It's
Friday, April 26, 2002
Tom Briseldon a.k.a. Briz. I had Briz three
NBC or CBS. And if you didn't like
something in the paper, I'm hoping you
flipped the page as you would change a TV
channel.
As it does every year, the Beacon did
encounter controversy. What was different
this semester, though, is that we received a
more-than-usual number of letters from
professors. Let me tell you a little something
about professors. They specialize. And it's
more than just studying an area in-depth,
professors adopt the mentality that they are
"special," and it is only their opinion that
matters, hands down. Just because we
published or help pass along a message that
was not in one person's viewpoint, our paper
was put down by many with the same
mentality. But, the very simple fact of the
matter is "that's business." The Beacon is
not solely about writing articles. There are
workings of a small business behind the
paper. And that's a fact, hands down.
What has bothered me the most is that
despite what I heard from numerous sources
about what some instructors had to say about
the Beacon (whether it was good or bad), not
one professor stopped down to the office to
say, "Hey, I have an idea to help the
Beacon..."
I am disappointed with the
communications department in the respect
that it allows some of its faculty (whose
to all of the faculty who have helped make
my college career the best five years of my
life.
Friends
When I was in high school, my friends
were pretty much limited to the "skaters"
due to some intra-school hostilities that I
will save for a psychiatrists' coach.
Once arriving at college, the notion of
separatism was thrown out the window. In
the past five years I have befriended people
who I would have never had the opportunity
to associate with in high school.
My friends have been there for me when
I needed a ride, a few dollars, or someone
to talk to at five in the morning. I honestly
don't think I would have made it through
certain periods of my life without the
support of my friends. I have (and have had,
as many are already alumni) such an
amazing group of friends here at school I
don't think I could possibly recreate it in
any atmosphere ever again.
As much as I would like to thank each
and every one of you, I don't think I could
without forgetting a few, so thank you all,
you know who you are. Keep in touch.
(ecfuBss@msn.com)
funny to watch Jay sit on the couch and
yell, "Why is she dating him? What is
his problem? Why is she so bitchy?"
And of course, we tape "Friends,"
Katie watches "X
-Files" religiously,
and we try to catch "South Park" and
"The Simpsons" when time allows.
Water Guns: Over Christmas, we all
exchanged gifts. I don't remember what
roommate it was, but one gave us all
water guns. Jay and I got into a monster
water fight one afternoon. I just
remember going to someone's house
afterwards with soaking wet hair. Those
water guns have since disappeared.
What a shame.
Catch the Bird: This has become
more of a chore, rather than a game. My
parakeet Malibu has recently learned to
open his cage door. Since his wings
The Behrend Beacon
classes are mediocre at best) to chastise the
best student newspaper in the Erie area,
considering there no print journalism classes
at Behrend. There are no courses where
students can learn the fundamentals of
Page Maker or Photoshop, two tools that are
vastly utilized in the "communcations" world.
I've had to do your job there, folks.
But, despite the few had apples we
encountered over the year, I would like to thank
the handful of professors like Mr. Kerwin and
Dr. Troester for their continued support of the
Beacon, realizing that belonging to such an
organization is a learning experience in itself,
and offering a little guidance when it was
appropriate.
One of the things that I have learned is that
regardless of how exceptional something can
be, there is always room for improvement. To
that extent, my staff and I are developing a list
of goals for the fall things that we want to
see implemented most at the Beacon.
Hopefully, we can work out any nooks and
crannies that the paper may have, while still
having more fun than a barrel of monkeys at
the same time. But, let me ask the rest of you,
do you know what direction you want to go,
where do you want to improve? Have a great
summer, everyone, see you in the fall.
My family:
I am extremely fortunate to have a family
that has supported me financially and
mentally throughout college. Any time I
needed someone to talk to I could pick up
the phone and call any one of two some odd
dozen family members ready to listen. The
holidays and random weekends I would head
home I could always expect a home cooked
meal and a warm bed in a room that didn't
smell like feet. All of the holidays featured
great family get-togethers and many of my
random weekends at home my parents, sister,
brother-in-law, and both sets of grandparents
would head out for some grub somewhere in
"dahtahn" Pittsburgh.
Both of my parents are teachers, and
therefore, they both know the value of
education. Their motivation to see me
through college has inspired me to work hard
throughout my life and hopefully provide the
same educational opportunities as I was
provided to my children.
I don't think I would have graduated, let
alone started, school without an amazing
immediate and extended family who
encouraged me to do my best every step of
the way.
Thank you and I love you a 11...
aren't clipped, he'll fly in circles around
my room while I duck and scream like a
wuss. After about three laps around my
room, Malibu will run into the wall and
fall down. We all find this pretty funny
(again, Schadenfreude) until we think
he's actually hurt. Malibu is usually
pretty good about flying back into his
cage, but last week he was being defiant.
I left Jay, the tallest of us, to bring him
down from the curtain rod. Way to
conquer the parakeet Jay; he's your bitch
now.
Well, this is my last editorial ever (most
likely). Word XP has rated it with a 5.8
readability level, and I'm pretty damn
proud. Hope you all have a great summer!