Eileen Falkenberg, Editorial Page Editor The Behrend Beacon In the 5„,,,,„,s Slat( I ir, 77rr 13( hit rid ( (( News Editors Courtney Straub Justin Curry Sports Editors Kevin Fiorenzo Amy Frizzell Editorial Page Editor Eileen Falkenberg Features Editor Enka Jarvis Greek Life Editor Eileen Falkenberg Staff Photographers Jeff Hankey Heather Myers •111•MIIIIIIMM•11••WW11111•••111EN 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 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 that week's issue. The Beacon reserves the right to edit letters for length, content, libel, spelling, and grammar. twenty dollar bills New by comparison pale courtesy of Philadelphia Inquirer When it comes to money, some people are slow to accept change. Oh, the blubbering of the bland, the screeching of the fuddy-duddies, the moaning of the fearful who would have America forever be the land of the green and the home of the staid. This is what they are carping about, this wee little step the new $2O bill takes toward polychromy? The green, peach and blue in the background make the bill look like a white shirt that got mixed in with a load of bleeding colors. What a half-hearted, even chintzy, splash of color. Yet it triggers worried talk of preserving monetary gravitas and protecting the traditions of the United States. Puh-leeze. Those who have come from foreign lands to America to live, work and study took seriously the currency of their home countries, currency that most likely is ablaze with colors. They, and Americans familiar with foreign money, know the artistic, not just fiscal, value that cur rency can have. Improving the former dyes not mean degrading the latter. Let's talk about tradition for a moment Would America ever have been born if its pioneers preferred the status quo disagreeP disagreeP disagreeP write your opinion to The Beacon I e-mail The Beacon at behrcoll2@aol.com Vi a nd make sure you include your name, major, and semester standing Editor in Chief Lauren Packer Managing Editor Robert Wynne Assistant Managing Editor Scott So/tis ~~~. ~ 1 .~ Adviser ...THE BEHREND eacon Cathy L Roan, Ph . O B "A newspaper by the students for the students" Contact The Beacon at: Telephone: (814) 898-6488 Fax: (814) 898-6019 ISSN 1071-9288. simply because it was familiar? Would this country have blossomed if its people had scurried away every time they reached the line that divided what was from what might he? Of course not. The United States was built on dar ing. It grew on a steady diet of believing there was more than what was visible. And so we kept dreaming, hypothesiz ing and traveling. Out of those dreams, hypotheses and journeys came art and scientific discoveries and admirers. Since Americans are also a practical people, making our currency more col orful has a pragmatic motive. Experts think the blue, green and peach in the background, plus other devices in the $2O bill, will make counterfeiting much more difficult. That's a fine goal. But making money more colorful is about spirit as well as pragmatism The true American spirit would say pshaw to the timid show of hues in the new twenty. It would urge a palette far bolder than this coloring that look likes a laundry-room accident. So let it never again be said that America is nothing more than the land of the green and the home of the staid. Let there be peach. And gold. And purple. Even puce. All those colors could be right on the money. Advertising Manager Ryan Russell Calendar Page Editor Amy Wilczynski A&E Editor Daniel J. Stasiewski Healthy Living Editors Courtney Straub Erika Jarvis Copy Editors Carolyn M. Tellers Kristin Bowers ' P , ' a-e,'"*.7".1,.,',;,, f..., 1 1 A '%.,,i,. IMF „, 1., - , : !..,..› r . Q . II .. ik,„:,-- r . s ; , , 1 ' Friday October 24, 2003 The too-good-to-be-true relationships of good looking celebrities by Lenore Skenazy New York Daily News Could it possibly be that the more beautiful you are, the more likely your mate will turn out to be a low-down, no good, philandering cad who treats you like the fuzz on week-old tapioca pud ding? Consider these recent events: Halle Berry is splitting from her husband, Eric Benet, a serial cheater. Uma Thurman has done the same with her hub, Ethan Hawke, a sensitive artiste (you can tell by his goatee). He supposedly has taken up with a 22-year-old he met at a res taurant. She was celebrating her birth day, he was humiliating his wife. Per fect match. Jennifer Lopez, meantime, is in the less-than-jolly position of maybe being dumped by her maybe fiance who maybe cut loose as we say in polite corn pany with a Canadian stripper. What gives? Why do the guys with the biggest beauties seem to seek the most extracurricular booty? ush, Congress endanger America women by signing abortion act by Gloria Feldt Planned Parenthood Federation of America George W. Bush has grabbed his pen from his holster and is ready to sign the so-called Partial Birth Abortion Act of 2(X)3, which passed Congress yesterday. For reasons known only to him, he will sign a bill that will endanger the lives of women all across America. Any pregnancy can go terribly wrong, and this ban outlaws medically necessary abortions that women need for serious medical conditions, such as strokes. re nal failure or diabetes. Anti-choice hardliners again are trying to politicize what is a medical and a moral issue. There is no procedure in medicine known as "partial birth" abortion. Further, the ban contains no exception when the health of the woman is at risk. The U.S. Supreme Court has already ruled that any ban that does not safeguard women's lives is unconstitutional. And why shouldn't it? The mandate of our highest court is to safeguard the lives of its citizens. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American Nurses Association and the American Medical Women's Association oppose this ban. And why shouldn't they? The most re- Strange and stand a little by Hans Zieger The Seattle Times Controversy erupted recently over a University of Michigan course titled "How to be Gay: Male Homosexuality and Initiation." A UM course descrip tion says, "just because you happen to be a gay man doesn't mean that you don't have to learn to become one." Unfortunately, UM is not the only uni versity at which strange and perverse courses are being taught. According to a report released last month by the conservative Young America's Foundation, "Many academic institutions no longer require courses in fundamental subjects, such as American history or Western civilization, yet use taxpayers' funds for eccentric, bizarre, disagree? disaeritiva I I Because life is fair. Not fair in a good sense, mind you. Just fair in the sense that stars who seem to have everything really don't have much more than the rest of us. Except money, power and chefs for their pets, that is. "Have you ever sat on a balcony and seen a beautiful view and then sat there for another 10 years and stopped notic ing it?" asks Susan Perry, author of "Loving in Flow." That's what happens to the men married to gorgeous wives. "Novelty is what's arousing," she says, "not beauty per se." Novelty also happens to be what is extremely available when you're a su perstar. And that's who the world's most beautiful women usually end up with. Flunky skunks who other women are only too happy to flash their Victoria's Secrets at. For a man to resist this smorgasbord, says Perry, "their character would have to be stronger than average. And no one ever said celebrities have stronger-than average character." But what about the fact that their spected medical associations in the country oppose a law that will imperil the lives of women who have been en trusted to their care. AGOG has stated its position clearly: "Intervention of legislative bodies into medical decision making is inappropri ate, ill-advised, and dangerous." If it is ever enforced, this ban will put doctors in jail for providing the best and safest health care to women. This dan gerous ban prevents women, in consul tation with their families and trusted doctors, from making decisions about their own health. Medicine should not be practiced on the floor of the Senate or the House of Representatives. I doubt that any mem ber of Congress would like his or her colleagues deciding whether he should have surgery for prostate cancer or she should have a quadruple bypass opera tion. What member of Congress would want his or her daughter or sister to have her health or life endangered because this law prohibits her from receiving the best medical care. Indeed, no woman in America should be at the mercy of politically motivated hardline anti-choice, anti-woman, anti human rights lawmakers who are endan gering the lives of women for their own perverse: course correction and 'politically correct' courses." Of the 50,000 college courses sur veyed by YAF, only a dozen could be described as "showing conservative ideas and authors in a positive light." Meanwhile, thousands of courses ac tively promote a blatantly left-wing phi losophy. Although these classes should not necessarily be banned, parents and students need to realize that intellectual diversity is becoming increasingly rare. At University of California at Santa Barbara, students can take "Black Marx ism," and at Williams College, they can train to work on the frontlines of the feminist movement in "Practicing Femi nism: A Study of Political Activism." At Yale University, aspiring writers can study "Black and Queer: Reading the Harlem Renaissance." And with Dartmouth College's "Here and Queer: Placing Homosexuality," students "will imagine what it means to imagine a queer nation." In addition to classes advancing the philosophy of Marx, University of Wash ington students can take Women's Stud ies 354, "Lesbian Lives and Culture," and Women's Studies 458, "Ideologies and Technologies of Motherhood." The 458 course description says, "Topics in clude slave mothers, surrogate mothers, The Behrend Beacon wives--or fiancees or long-term girl friends, as Liz Hurley was to Hugh Grant--are the very women most of the male population is busy licking posters of? Doesn't that excite the lucky hubs enough to make 'em think twice? Apparently not. It could even make things worse. Like a drug addict who keeps taking bigger doses, a beauty ad dict married to, say, Nicole Kidman, could end up craving even finer flesh. These men are on such beauty overdrive that their minds (or some other vital or- gans) go nuts. But just perhaps, suggests Jill Spiegel, author of "Flirting for Success," the fault lies not in the stars, male, but in the stars, female. "When you're a starlet who gets everything so easy, you crave a little challenge," Spiegel says. "That's why they're attracted to men with a bad boy edge to them." Bottom line? Beautiful women + beautiful men = sad wrecks of lives. At least until they find other beautiful women and men. Then once again the helicopters hover and everyone toasts the radiant (if doomed) new couple. political gain We know the law is on our side be cause the court has already spoken. And we know the American people are on our side because two-thirds of voters believe that women should have the right to bodily integrity and self-determination. What we don't know is why any poli tician would knowingly want to harm his or her own constituents. In fact, this leg islation is the culmination of a deceptive campaign to mislead these very citizens. Women come to Planned Parenthood because we tell them the truth and we support them in making the right medi cal decisions for themselves. Congress has made a reckless and ir responsible decision, and that is why we must now go to the courts to protect women's health. Because our mandate is to provide the highest quality reproductive health care, Planned Parenthood will seek an imme diate injunction and request a restrain ing order to prevent this legislation from taking effect. We know we will win. That's not the issue. The issue is why we continually are fighting for what should already be ours -- the freedom, the human right -- to make our own childbearing choices. Colleges could lesbian mothers, transracial mothers, co-mothers, teen mothers." While it has long been taboo to chal lenge the feminist, communist or multicultural faiths on campuses, it is now popular to assault the Christian re ligion and its role in Western civiliza tion. Rutgers University, for example, fea tures a course called "Sexuality in the Western Religious Tradition," which explores "problems" with Judeo-Chris tian beliefs about sexuality. In some classes, violent revolution is glorified. Duke University's "Global izing Protest" studies "alternative vi sions" that were "articulated" at the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle. Typically, college professors choose their courses and the manner in which to teach them. But many, if not most, professors espouse views that are so far out of line with mainstream America that many students are left feeling alone and confused. The moral, political and religious beliefs that students learned from their parents are cruelly trampled in the loose dust of moral relativism. It's time for parents and students, and even taxpayers, to take issue with the liberal state of American higher edu- Page
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